Jacob Ries (1660–1751) of Prague first worked as a badchan (jester) for weddings. In 1710, he became court jester in Vienna under Charles VI. The artist of this portrait of Ries is not known. It…
This glimpse into an eighteenth-century German Jewish marriage ceremony offers an opportunity to consider how gender roles have changed for this vital ritual.
Vishniac’s photographs of Jews in Eastern Europe, which were among the last to document these communities before their destruction in the Holocaust, have become iconic images. The best known of them…