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22* Jay Rovner
“Praying Hands,”22 but one whose textuality enables it to be more specific and
defined, as is the case with Milstein’s micrographic orant-shem a icon.23
The upper border line passage לעומר, לעוקד על־דלתתי יום יום,אורי אז־ם ומע־לי
( מזוזת פתחיProverbs 8:34: “Happy is the man who listens to me, coming to
my gates early each day, waiting outside my doors” [NJPS]) may indicate that
this chart was intended for use in a liturgical setting; however, it may have
been intended metaphorically in this devotional context. The doors mentioned
in this verse could indicate a heavenly venue as well as an earthly site.
Contextualization of the Micrographic Carpet Page
Micrography is thought to have originated among scribes in the copying of
masoretic notes in the margins of large-format Hebrew Bible codices,24 whether
to enhance the appearance of that rather dry form of L istenw issenschaft-type
22 The Durer piece was a preparatory drawing, intended to be used for the figure of an apostle
in an altar piece, but that can actually be perceived as the source of its archetypal power.
Indeed, once used in the figure, the hands are subsumed into the narrative of the scene, no
longer a disembodied, iconic type.
23 As an iconic “two-dimensional” linguistic construction of the interior dimension of the
articulated longings, which is set within an exterior dimension consisting of a verbalized
defintion of the pious persona, this carpet page recalls magic bowls that also signify their
message in a double manner; that is, bowls that both signify the desired action in their
surrounding formulaic text, and also actualize it sympathetically by enclosing, within the
verbalization, an image of a bound demon or a vicious warrior (see M. D. Swartz, “The
Aesthetics of Blessing and Cursing: Literary and Iconogaphic Dimensions of Hebrew and
Aramaic Blessing and Curse Texts,” Journal ofAncient Near Eastern Religions 5 (2006),
pp. 187-211.
24 See Avrin (n. 19 above), p. 45. She is followed by others, e.g., I. Tahan, HebrewManuscripts:
the Power of Script and Image (London 2007), p. 10, who claims that “unique to Jewish
art, micrography is the weaving ofminuscule lettering into abstract, geometric and figuative
designs. This scribal practice...started around the 9th century in Egypt” (see the following
note on the problem with this date). On the variety of artistic uses of micrographic scripts
which developed as the art and technique of Hebrew micrography itself developed and
spread, including illustrative examples, see Avrin, ibid, and idem, HebrewMicrography: One
Thousand Years ofArt in Script (Jerusalem 1981); Tahan, ibid, Index, s.v., “micrography”;
D. R. Halperin, Illuminating in Micrography — Between Script and Brush: The Catalan
