Portrait of Jacob Ries

The scroll (megillah) of Esther is read out loud on the holiday of Purim. This example, from Baghdad, is hand painted, with an ornate design in which bands of flowers frame the text. It is rolled on a…

Al Hirschfeld was most famous for his caricatures of actors, musicians, and other figures from the arts and public life. He himself preferred to be known as a “characterist.” After the birth of his…

The masterpiece of eighteenth-century Ladino literature is the encyclopedic commentary on the Bible, Me‘am lo‘ez (From a People of Foreign Tongue), by Jacob Huli, the first volume of which was…