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Designed in the German neoclassical style, the Wörlitz synagogue was modeled on Rome’s Temple of Vesta, featuring a circular building with a conical roof. It was commissioned by Prince Leopold…
Janów, Poland, was home to a unique wooden synagogue. The town was settled by Jews toward the end of the seventeenth century, and, by 1739, the Jewish population formed the majority of the town’s…
The Grand Synagogue of Lyon was built shortly after the establishment of a regional consistory by Emperor Napoleon III and the appointment of a regional chief rabbi. In 1858, a new synagogue for the…
This postage stamp with an image of King Leopold I of Belgium was the first stamp issued on the European continent.
The ketubah is a religious and legal contract of marriage. Traditionally, it outlines the conjugal and economic conditions of a marriage and is written in Aramaic. This printed ketubah created by…
The kapporet is a short valance hung over the curtain of the Torah ark that first began to appear in Eastern Europe in the late seventeenth century. The griffins and crowns that appear on this kappore…
Paper cuts have been a tradition of Jewish folk art, with the earliest record of one dating to the fourteenth century. Given the widespread availability of paper in Europe by the mid-nineteenth…
Congregation Shearith Israel was the first Jewish congregation established in North America, and the only Jewish congregation in New York City from 1654 until 1825. Between 1654 and 1730, it used…
This glimpse into an eighteenth-century German Jewish marriage ceremony offers an opportunity to consider how gender roles have changed for this vital ritual.
The Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest is the largest synagogue in Europe, and the second largest in the world, capable of accommodating three thousand people. The Moorish- and Byzantine-inspired…
