The painter Moshe Rynecki was born into a traditional Jewish home in a small town near Siedlice, Poland. He received a yeshiva education before studying art in Warsaw in 1906–1907. He painted familiar scenes from Warsaw Jewish life, both everyday activities and religious holidays and rituals. After the German conquest of Poland, he was forced into the Warsaw ghetto, where he painted this scene of refugees from elsewhere in Poland arriving in the ghetto. He was deported to Maidanek in 1943.
By the time this sea pilot’s map of Suriname was created in 1680, there was a well-established Jewish community there. In the 1660s, Jewish communities arose on the Caribbean islands of Martinique…
Scribes writing lists, Nimrud, late eighth century BCE. Two Assyrian scribes, standing side by side, make lists of booty as it comes in. One writes on a clay tablet and the other writes on a scroll.
Among Catherine da Costa’s surviving paintings is the full-length portrait of her father, Dr. Fernando Mendes (1647–1724). Mendes was a prominent Jewish physician, who attended both King Charles II…