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Mordechai Meisel (1528–1601) was a court Jew, merchant, philanthropist and builder in Prague. Meisel became a member of the Prague Jewish Communal Council in 1576 and later served as its head. This is…
Tombstone of Shifra Tamari (d. 1565), Padua, Italy. In the early modern period, most Jewish tombstones in Italy were Italian Renaissance in style. Hebrew epitaph poems, like the one on this gravestone…
The first Jewish community was established in Kingston, Jamaica by refugees from Spain and Portugal after 1492. This tombstone in the cemetery of She‘are Shalom Synagogue marks the grave of Abraham…
The Jewish cemetery of Altona is made up of two separate cemeteries, one Sephardic (established in 1611 and later expanded several times) and one Ashkenazic (1616, also later expanded). In the…
Tombstone of a son of Ephraim Cohen, who was buried in a Jewish cemetery in Cochin, India. The first Jewish communities in Cochin were established as early as 1000 CE, and legends claim that Jews were…
This tombstone of Isaac ben Ḥayim, who died in 1728, includes (at the top) a pair of deer and a pair of lions, animal carvings that often appeared on Jewish tombstones in Eastern Europe. They…
Manuel Levy Ximenes Belmonte (1729) and Esther de Pinto (1741)
The process of ritual purification of a dead body, known as taharah, involves careful cleaning of the corpse. Prior to being dressed in a white cotton shroud, the body of the deceased is washed, the…
Sarah Soncino, who died in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul, Turkey) in 1735, was a member of the prominent Soncino family, which established a printing press there in 1530, one in a long line of…
This tombstone of Joel ben Ze’ev, who died in 1744, is topped with a carving of an eagle. Winged griffins and eagles symbolize God’s power. Only the wealthy could afford stone markers before the…
