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Born and raised in Oran, Algeria, the talmudic scholar Jacob Sasportas served as rabbi of Tlemcen. Forced to flee Morocco due to political unrest, in 1647 he embarked on a life of wandering. In 1664…
Édouard Moyse’s painting portrays the Grand Sanhedrin, the Jewish high court assembled by Napoleon in 1807 to ratify the answers of an assembly of Jewish communal leaders to twelve questions submitted…
David Oppenheim (1664–1736) was the chief rabbi of Prague. Born in Worms, he was the son of a communal leader and nephew of Samuel Oppenheim (1630–1703), financier and war contractor to Habsburg…
During his life, Samuel Abbas amassed an impressive library that included 1,136 books in different languages—Latin (more than four hundred works), Hebrew, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, and…
This rabbinic ordination certificate granted to Judah ben Eliezer Briel was printed as a broadside in Venice and signed by prominent Venetian rabbis. It certifies his learning and his fitness to…
Samson Wertheimer (1658–1724) occupied a number of prominent roles, including court Jew, Austrian financier, and chief rabbi of Hungary and Moravia. This portrait was painted around the time when he…
David Tevele Schiff (d. 1791) was the rabbi of the Great Synagogue of London from 1765 until his death. At the time of his appointment, the rabbi of the Great Synagogue was also considered to be the…
In 1735, Eleazar ben Samuel arrived in Amsterdam to take up the post of chief rabbi of the Ashkenazic community. To mark the occasion, Joel ben Lippman Levi minted a medal. On the front of the medal…
Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (1789–1866), the third rebbe of Chabad Hasidism, was a preeminent religious figure of nineteenth-century East European Jewry. The portrait is an early example of Boris…
Baghdad-born Suleiman (Saliman) Menaḥem Mani (1850–1924) held many important posts in Ottoman Palestine, including chief rabbi of Hebron. He was also a Hebrew poet and fiction writer and the author of…
