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This silver plate from Padua, Italy, was made for use in the brit milah, the circumcision ritual celebrated when a baby boy is eight days old. In this detailed depiction of the ritual, the baby seems…
Amulets often took the form of Bes, a minor Egyptian deity, who was understood to guard mothers in childbirth and their babies. Bes is often shown with a feathered headdress and a grotesque face, a…
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…
Kibbutz Netzer Sereni was established by Holocaust survivors from the Buchenwald concentration camp. In fact, its original name was Kibbutz Buchenwald. It is now named for Enzo Sereni, an Italian…
The Hebrew word Shaddai—another name for God—is etched in the center of this ornate silver amulet from Italy.
Sefer Raziel (also known as The Book of Raziel the Angel) is a book of practical kabbalah that may have been composed in the thirteenth century, though scholars believe parts of it date from earlier…
This printed amulet, from Germany, was made for infant boys. The amulet has a companion, for a girl child (see “Amulet for a Newborn Girl”). The text in the center of the amulet is surrounded by a…
This detailed bilingual Hebrew-Yiddish register kept by Roza, a Jewish midwife in the Jewish community of the Dutch city of Groningen in the years from 1794 to 1832, provides basic information about…
This German amulet is printed with unique designs. The names of the three angels, Sanoi, Sansanoi, and Smangalaf, indicate the use of this amulet as birth protection for mother and child, as…
This impressive cut-paper birth amulet is in the form of the double eagle, the symbol of the Habsburg Monarchy (and pre-partition Poland) and thus a popular motif in Galician Jewish folk art. It is…
