Ilia Rodov () is a historian of art and researcher of Jewish

visual culture Visual culture is the aspect of culture expressed in visual images. Many academic fields study this subject, including cultural studies, art history, critical theory, philosophy, media studies, Deaf Studies, and anthropology. The field of vi ...

. He is a professor at the Department of Jewish Art and holds The Samson Feldman Chair in History and Culture of East European Jewry at

Bar-Ilan University Bar-Ilan University (BIU, , ''Universitat Bar-Ilan'') is a public research university in the Tel Aviv District city of Ramat Gan, Israel. Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is Israel's second-largest academic university institution. It has 20,000 ...

Biography

Ilia Rodov was born in

Bobruisk Babruysk (, ) or Bobruysk (, ; , ) is a city in Mogilev Region, Belarus. It serves as the administrative center of Babruysk District, though it is administratively separated from the district. It is situated on the Berezina River. Babruysk o ...

(

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

). His father Mikhail Rodov and ancestors of his mother Raya Vorobeychik were decorative painters. With the liberalization of Soviet national politics under

Perestroika ''Perestroika'' ( ; rus, перестройка, r=perestrojka, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg, links=no) was a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associ ...

, Rodov advocated the consolidation of the Jewish Community in Bobruisk. He was the founder and first president of the Mendele Moykher-Sforim Jewish Culture Club, which was established in Bobruisk in September 1988. He also published a literary and art anthology "Avanim", organized an

ulpan An ulpan (), plural ''ulpanim'', is an institute or school for the intensive study of Hebrew. Ulpan is a Hebrew word meaning "studio", "teaching", or "instruction". The ulpan is designed to teach adult immigrants to Israel the basic language s ...

, and taught

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

. In 1991, he emigrated to Israel, and currently lives in

Mazkeret Batya Mazkeret Batya () (lit. "Batya Memorial") is a local council in central Israel located southeast of Rehovot and from Tel Aviv. Mazkeret Batya spans an area of 7,440 dunams (7 km2). In it had a population of . The mayor of Mazkeret Batya i ...

Education

Ilia Rodov was educated at the Serov Art Institute (former Tavricheskaya Art School at Saint Petersburg) and graduated

summa cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...

in Theory and History of Arts from the

Imperial Academy of Arts The Imperial Academy of Arts, informally known as the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, was an art academy in Saint Petersburg, founded in 1757 by Ivan Shuvalov, the founder of the Imperial Moscow University, under the name ''Academy of th ...

. He received his Ph.D. degree at the Department of Art History, the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

Career

Ilia Rodov is Professor at the Department of Jewish Art and holds The Samson Feldman Chair in History and Culture of East European Jewry at

. He is also the editor-in-chief of "Ars Judaica: Bar Ilan Journal of Jewish Art" and a co-editor of "Jews, Judaism, and the Arts" book series at

Brill Academic Publishers Brill Academic Publishers () is a Dutch international academic publisher of books, academic journals, and databases founded in 1683, making it one of the oldest publishing houses in the Netherlands. Founded in the South Holland city of Leiden, ...

. Ilia Rodov began his academic career by teaching at the departments of Art History and Jewish and Comparative Folklore, the

. He joined the faculty of

as a lecturer at the Department of Comparative Literature, then took a tenured position at the Program for Jewish Art. He served as the founding chair of the Department of Jewish Art (2014–2020) and directed the establishing of the graduate academic programs in Jewish Art History and in Art Therapy. From 1999 to 2005, Rodov worked at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a Director of the Chais Center Academic Programs for Jewish Studies in the Republic of Belarus.

Research

Rodov investigates Jewish visual culture and ritual architecture. His publications and lectures explore the history, patronage, semantics, function, and perceptions of images, sculptures, architectural decoration, and furniture design from comparative, intercultural, and phenomenological perspectives. He focuses on the manifestations of sanctity in Jewish religious art, architecture, and microarchitecture. He also studies the

and

pseudo-Hebrew Pseudo-Hebrew is the artistic use of symbols meant to appear like Hebrew script but that are not in fact Hebrew letters. The related phenomenon of the use of actual Hebrew letters in ways that do not represent actual language may be called "nonsen ...

inscriptions in

Christian art Christian art is sacred art which uses subjects, themes, and imagery from Christianity. Most Christian groups use or have used art to some extent, including early Christian art and architecture and Christian media. Images of Jesus and narrative ...

, and historiography of Jewish art and architecture. Rodov conducted research projects supported by the

Israel Science Foundation The Israel Science Foundation (ISF) is a nonprofit organization that provides monetary grants for scientific research in Israel. It is the Israeli analogue of scientific funding bodies in other countries such as the US National Science Foundation, ...

and German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development. He is also involved in the study and representation of Israeli artists born in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

and the

Former Soviet Union The post-Soviet states, also referred to as the former Soviet Union or the former Soviet republics, are the independent sovereign states that emerged/re-emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Prior to their independence, they ...

References

External links

Ilia Rodov list of publications

Rodov, Ilia
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rodov, Ilia Living people Repin Institute of Arts alumni Tavricheskaya Art School alumni Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni Israeli art historians Architectural historians Year of birth missing (living people)