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Batman is one of the longest-running comic series in the world, in continuous publication since 1939. When it made its debut, it was unique in featuring a hero who was an ordinary man without…
This caricature of Napoleon III (1808–1873), the last monarch of France, was made after the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), when Napoleon was being held in captivity in…
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…
This glimpse into an eighteenth-century German Jewish marriage ceremony offers an opportunity to consider how gender roles have changed for this vital ritual.
Jews first settled in Kaifeng, the capital of Henan province in central China, before 1127. According to scholars, they had come from India or Persia, spoke Persian, and worked as cotton dyers and…
This Haggadah was commissioned by Nathan ben Isaac Oppenheim of Vienna, a member of a prominent family of Court Jews. Its title page features a miniature of the sacrifice of Isaac being prevented by…
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 print depicting a Jewish wedding in Fürth is from the beginning of the eighteenth century, a period of prosperity for the city’s Jewish community. There were between 350 and 400 Jewish families…
This elaborate Italian kabbalistic manuscript depicts the inner processes of the divine (the sefirot) in the shape of a tree (in Hebrew, ilan), or tree of life. Visualization plays an important part…
Like Torah scrolls, the scroll of the biblical book of Esther, read ritually in the synagogue on the holiday of Purim, must be completely unadorned. However, in the sixteenth century, for reasons…
