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Moses ben Abraham Pescarol’s illuminated scroll of Esther, completed in Ferrara, constitutes one of the oldest examples of an illustrated manuscript of this biblical book, which is chanted on the…
The book of Esther (also known as the Scroll [megillah] of Esther) is read out loud on the holiday of Purim. This example of a scroll from Venice has Hebrew text framed by arcades and borders…
This Haggadah, decorated in the Ashkenazic tradition, was copied in northern Italy. As is traditional for Ashkenazic Haggadahs, illustrations appear in the margins and frame the text. At the top left…
This woodcut depicts Jewish women and girls lighting candles to mark the beginning of the Sabbath or a holiday. The illustration appears in a Yiddish translation by Shim’on Levi Gintsburg, printed in…
These woodcuts appeared in Sefer minhagim (Book of Customs), a very popular Yiddish book published by Giovanni di Gara, the leading publisher of Jewish books in Venice from 1564 to 1609. It was the…
This Haggadah from Venice was commissioned by Moses ben Gerson Parenzo, the last of the Parenzo Hebrew printers, and issued at the Caleoni press on behalf of the Bragadini family. This page shows the…
This page illustrating the blowing of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah is from a Yiddish book of customs from Italy. By the sixteenth century, Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazic Jews were the largest groups of…
Question: . . . When Rabbi Joseph Ottolenghi was visiting this land, he told me that he printed sixteen megillot on parchment prepared for this purpose [i.e., to be used for the scrolls—Ed.]. When I…
These are marginal illustrations found in a manuscript siddur from Italy according to the Romaniote rite, with prayers focused on marriage and birth rituals and customs, as well as the pidyon ha-ben…
