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Kehunat Avraham (The Priesthood of Abraham), published in Venice in 1719, is an interpretation and retelling of sections from the book of Psalms in verse. This portrait of its author, Abraham ben…
Born to converso parents and baptized as Manoel Dias Soeiro, Menasseh Ben Israel moved as a boy with his family to Amsterdam, where they reverted openly to Judaism. In 1626, he established the first…
Song at the Sea (Exodus 15), Leningrad Codex, 1009 CE. The photo shows the first fourteen verses of the poem (Exodus 15:1–14) and a few prose verses from the end of the preceding chapter. The text of…
This dictionary of maritime terms, a hand-written manuscript, includes definitions in Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and French.
The supposed author of Josippon (an account of Jewish history from the Garden of Eden to the destruction of the Second Temple) was Josephus Flavius, though it is now generally believed that the book…
In the back of a manuscript collection of astronomical texts, which includes one of Abraham Ibn Ezra’s works on the use of the astrolabe (a tool for astronomical calculations), is a set of crude but…
The Jewish Publication Society of America (JPS) was founded in Philadelphia in 1888. (It had a number of precursors that did not last.) Today, JPS is the oldest nonprofit, nondenominational publisher…
Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32), Aleppo Codex, ca. 925 CE. The photo shows the beginning of the poem (Deuteronomy 32:1–14) and the prose verses from the end of the preceding chapter. The text of the…
Established in 1616 as part of a yeshiva in Amsterdam, the Ets Ḥayim library continues to function to this day, making it the oldest operational Jewish library in the world. It moved to its current…
This diploma of Doctor of Medicine was awarded to Jacob Mahler by the University of Padua, Italy. Mahler, born in Bingen-on-Rhine, Germany, studied medicine and philosophy, and in 1695 was awarded a…
