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This maḥzor (holiday prayer book) contains the festival prayers for the whole year, according to the rite of Carpentras, and was copied in Provence. The Jews of the former papal territory of Comtat…
On June 7, 1690, Samuel de Isaac Senior Teixeira married Rachel Teixeira de Mattos Senior in Hamburg. Their beautiful ketubah (marriage contract) depicts the couple under the wedding canopy…
This prayer book for the Rosh Hashanah festival from Crete is elaborately decorated inside with drawings of animals and people and has a colorful title page. Greek (Romaniote/Byzantine) Jews had lived…
Sifre ‘evronot—manuals for calculating the Jewish calendar, including leap years and holidays—were a popular genre of Ashkenazic illustrated manuscripts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries…
One of Charlotte von Rothschild’s most outstanding works is the only known nineteenth-century Hebrew manuscript to have been illuminated by a woman.
This ketubah (marriage contract) from Padua, Italy, marks the marriage of Samuel ben Gerson ha-Kohen me-ha-ḥazanim (“of the cantors,” or Cantarini) and Colomba bat David Aziz. The groom was a…
Traditionally, until increased access to doctors and hospitals was available after World War I, many East European Jews relied on folk medicine, which included amulets and magical cures. Books, like…
This two-page spread from Elijah ben Moses Loanz’s Toledot Adam (The Generations of Adam) includes examples of some of the kabbalistic amulets and formulae for which he was famous.
This map showing tombs in the land of Israel was drawn in Italy by a Jewish scribe and is an example of a “pilgrimage scroll.” Pilgrimage scrolls, also known as itineraries, included visual and…
This maḥzor (holiday prayer book), containing the Jewish prayers according to the Italian rite, was written by the scribe Eliezer ben Abraham of Pisa, for Yema, the widow of Moses of Modena (referred…
