Elijah Menaḥem ben Abba Mari Ḥalfan was a kabbalist and humanist who lived in Venice. He worked as a physician and was educated in both philosophy and rabbinic literature. He was an associate of the Portuguese Jewish messianic pretender Solomon Molkho and is known for his openness to interacting with—and even teaching Hebrew to—Christian scholars.
The wooden synagogue in Kamionka Strumiłowa was built in the late seventeenth century. Its walls were covered in colorful paintings and, as in most wooden synagogues, the bimah occupied a central…
Tomb of an Israeli Soldier I was one of a series of works painted by Michail Grobman at a time when any sympathetic gesture toward Israel was, for Soviet Jews, an act of defiance. Grobman’s very style…
Albert Antebi (1873–1919), the subject of this photograph, was an educator, philanthropist, and diplomat in Ottoman Palestine. Born in Damascus to a rabbinical Jewish family, he became a prominent…