Showing Results 1 - 9 of 9
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…
This scroll of Esther from Germany, created for use on the holiday of Purim, is extensively decorated, with illustrations of biblical scenes from the Esther story, as well as various flora and fauna…
The violence of the Passover song “Had Gadya” (“Who Knows One”) clearly spoke to this illustrator’s sense of horror following World War I.
This foldout calendar is a beautifully illuminated feature that appears in a sefer ‘evronot. Works of this genre were Jewish calendar handbooks for calculating the dates of religious holidays and…
Ḥay ibn Yaqẓān, composed by the Muslim philosopher Abū Bakr ibn Tufayl al-Qaysi (1110–1185), relates the story of Ḥay ibn Yaqẓān, literally “Alive, son of Awake,” as he grows up alone on a deserted…
There have traditionally been two different interpretations of the biblical Song of Songs. It can be read as an erotic love poem or as a poem of yearning for the Land of Israel. Ze’ev Raban’s…
This maḥzor (holiday prayer book) contains the festival prayers for the whole year, according to the rite of Carpentras, and was copied in Provence. The Jews of the former papal territory of Comtat…
These four etchings were made by Rembrandt van Rijn for Menasseh Ben Israel’s book, Piedra Gloriosa (Glorious Stone), a messianic treatise. Clockwise from upper left, they illustrate the biblical…
The de Pinto family were wealthy merchant bankers who lived in Amsterdam from the seventeenth century on. In the Iberian Peninsula, members of the family converted to Christianity at the end of the…
