Showing Results 1 - 10 of 15
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…
The Rema Synagogue, named after the famous rabbi and scholar Moses Isserles (known by the Hebrew acronym “Rema”), was built in 1553 in the city of Kazimierz (today a district of Kraków). It was…
Aleksander Lesser’s most famous painting is The Funeral of the Five Victims, which depicts the public funeral of five men shot by the Russian military on March 2, 1861, during a rally calling for…
The text on this inscription, dating from the establishment of the Rema Synagogue in Krákow, reads, in part: “The man, R. Israel ben Joseph (of blessed memory), gathered his strength, for the honor of…
There were once hundreds of wooden synagogues in Poland and Lithuania, but only a very few examples of this particularly Jewish form of architecture have survived. The Zabłudów synagogue, built around…
This Hanukkah lamp from Poland is made from brass and would likely have been placed near the Torah ark in a synagogue. An engraved and cast eagle sits above a domed cupola, representing gratitude and…
This Torah shield contains a rare example of a personal inscription by the silversmith, stating: “This is the work of my hands in which I take pride, Ze’ev ben Abraham [?], silversmith from Piotrków…
The Rema Synagogue, named after the famous rabbi and scholar Moses Isserles (known by the Hebrew acronym “Rema”), was built in 1553 in the city of Kazimierz (today a district of Kraków). It was…
The Old Synagogue (Alte-Schul, or Stara Bożnica) of Kraków is located in the Kazimierz district of the city. Because it was in a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth vulnerable to attack by…
This partially gilt-silver Torah crown from Poland is studded with semi-precious stones. Its two-tiered base is typical of Torah crowns from Eastern Europe. It is inscribed in Hebrew with the words,…
