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In the nineteenth century, especially in the era before photography, it was common for artists to travel to exotic or picturesque locations in Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, and to produce…
I certainly had an obscure childhood
but intensely my own,
a childhood which wanted to be dashing
but had the features of a caricature.
Yes, a caricature. For example:
that absurd love for Sophie,…
The music for “Se’u She‘arim (Lift Up Your Heads, O Gates)” resembles the choral marches found in grand opera. The words are from Psalm 24: O gates, lift up your heads! Up high, you everlasting doors…
Question: A woman pledged, when she lay ill, to give her disukia, which is embroidered with gilt silver thread, to be made into a ceremonial object for the synagogue. The disukia is what is called in…
Mah Tovu notes our coming into the house of God, symbolized by the words “tents” and “tabernacles.” Mah Tovu begins with a passage from the Torah (Num. 24), in which the pagan prophet Balaam blesses…
For decades, my efforts have been directed at purifying the old modes [die alten Weisen]. Through [general] use and arbitrary treatment they have suffered tactless changes and distortions. I…
On the eve of the Day of Atonement, in the afternoon, I changed from the express to the local train that runs to my home town. The Jews who had traveled with me got…
Edouard Brandon’s painting of Amsterdam’s famous Portuguese Synagogue (1675) is set on the Ninth of Av, a fast day commemorating and mourning the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Members of the…
Vilna, my great matriarch, an established Jewish city,
Jerusalem of the Exile, an ancient nation’s consolation in the north!
This [poem] is your patched kerchief, like the roof of the old synagogue,…
The sinyor Rav h"r Shaul had a strong aversion to the Turkish language to the extent that he would excommunicate anyone singing Turkish songs. Not only Turkish songs, but even a Jewish liturgical…