Working on my new zine and prints that I make about the jewish heritage of the SchUM region. this acronym stands for Speyer, Worms and Mainz, three important jewish communities of the medival times, this places were basically the cradle of ashkenazic judaism as we know today (check for example the Takkanot Schum or the Chassidei Ashkenaz).

In the project I take the symbols I found in these cities and use an old, historical photograpy technique called cyanotype (or blue/sun-print) to create the prints.

This lion was found on a floor tile from the women’s prayer hall in Speyer. This building was added to the already existing synagogue in the mid 13th century, its floor tiles had a variety of motifs. A similar lion motif on a floor tile dating back to the same period, has been found also in Mainz, in the Dome area.

I made prints on colored papers and I love them a lot!

In this zine we present you the jewish symbols of the famous SchUM cities - Speyer, Worms and Mainz. They were important jewish communities from the High Middle Ages, and SchUM is the acronym made up of the first letters of the hebrew names of the cities.

The symbols were taken from tombstones, synagogue ornamentations, floor tiles and even from a mikveh. We used linocut prints for creating the zine, where along with the symbols you can read about its meaning and a bit of history about their place of origin and the communities.

Symbols of SchUM Zine (2024)

In this zine we present the symbols and stories from the Jewish heritage of the SchUM cities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz, obviously without claiming to be exhaustive.

Through the symbols of the Jewish visual culture, the reader is given a short insight into the world of this important heritage and the life of the Jewish communities that lived there. These signs and motifs link the past with the present, and carry a message and aesthetic appeal that brings us closer to the Jewish communities that flourished here in the Middle Ages.

I'm doing now a project in the SchUM cities, which will eventually became a similar zine that I made on hungarian abandoned jewish cemeteries - you can still order this btw. Here in Worms I encountered few of the rarest symbols that I ever saw on jewish tombstones, one of them is this cute hat (?). Its a rather unique thing from here as I learned - the houses of the jewish quarter had their own symbols and they put that on their tombstones as well.