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[The lessons a mother should give her son]: My son, you should know that before your body looked the way it does now, it was nothing. You were formed in my belly from the drops of fertility that came…
This impressive cut-paper birth amulet is in the form of the double eagle, the symbol of the Habsburg Monarchy (and pre-partition Poland) and thus a popular motif in Galician Jewish folk art. It is…
This is an early printed amulet from Tunis, containing texts and symbols commonly used on such talismans printed in North Africa. However, this example is somewhat unusual, as the Shir le-ma‘alot psal…
Mordecai walked home from the village on the path that bordered the forest. All the talk of the elders in the village chief’s house had intoxicated him more than the strongest whiskey. Under his…
I have a friend, a teacher, with shaggy hair black as pitch.
He has a child (his wife is still a child too)
and when he comes home, difficult and gloomy,
she runs to meet him, like a quivering wave:…
Across from me in the subway sat the madonna
Crossing her legs,
Bending over a tabloid.
She read about a cashier-girl who jumped into the water
When her bridegroom left her with a rising belly.
The…
This German amulet is printed with unique designs. The names of the three angels, Sanoi, Sansanoi, and Smangalaf, indicate the use of this amulet as birth protection for mother and child, as…
This Torah binder, made for boys at birth and later brought by young men as a symbol of participation in the synagogue, illustrates the fixed nature of traditional gender expectations.
They heard the sound of the Lord God moving about in the garden at the breezy time of day; and the man and his wife hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. The Lord God called out to…
This printed amulet to protect a woman in childbirth features a central scene depicting Adam and Eve and several animals in the Garden of Eden, with a snake coiled around the forbidden “tree of…
