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In Ashkenazic communities, circumcision benches with two seats were sometimes used from the nineteenth century on, one for the sandek, the godfather on whose lap the baby boy is circumcised, and one…
This alms container from Charleston, South Carolina, is made of cast and engraved silver. The cartouche on the front features two rampant lions flanking a menorah. The Hebrew inscriptions read:…
This ewer and basin from Turkey were used to wash hands ritually during the Passover seder. Owned by the Benguiat family, a large and prominent Sephardic family in the Ottoman Empire, the objects…
A 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 ornate ketubah from Oran, Algeria…
This tombstone of a Torah scholar from Sieniawa, Poland includes motifs and symbols often found on Jewish tombstones in Poland, such as a crown and palm trees. Other common symbols on Jewish…
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…
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 oldest Jewish cemetery in the United States is located in New York City; the grave of Cantor Gershom Mendes Seixas can be seen here in the burial grounds of Congregation Shearith Israel.
This illustration depicting a Jewish wedding taking place under a huppah (wedding canopy) near a synagogue appeared in the book Jüdisches Ceremoniel (Jewish Ceremonial Customs), by Paul Christian…
This rare example of a Roman ketubah (marriage contract) from the seventeenth century was written on the occasion of the marriage of Menahem ben Samuel Zadik to Zevia, daughter of the prominent banker…
