With the help of over 100 illustrations spanning three centuries, Richard Cohen investigates the role of visual images in European Jewish history. The interaction of Jews with the visual arts takes place, Cohen argues, in a vast gallery of prints, portraits, books, synagogue architecture, ceremonial art, modern Jewish painting and sculpture, political broadsides, monuments, medals and memorabilia. Pointing to recent scholarship that overturns the stereotype of Jews as people of the text, unconcerned with the visual, Cohen shows how the coming of the modern period expanded the relationship of Jews to the visual realm far beyond the religious context. Toward the end of the 19th century, the study and collecting of Jewish art became a legitimate and even passionate pursuit and signalled the entry of Jews into the art world as painters, collectors and dealers. The collecting of Jewish art became a legitimate and even passionate pursuit.