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This ewer and basin from Turkey were used to wash hands ritually during the Passover seder. Owned by the Benguiat family, a large and prominent Sephardic family in the Ottoman Empire, the objects…
A ketubah is a religious and legal contract of marriage. Traditionally, it outlines the conjugal and economic conditions of a marriage and is written in Aramaic. This ornate ketubah from Oran, Algeria…
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…
Congregation Shearith Israel was the first Jewish congregation established in North America, and the only Jewish congregation in New York City from 1654 until 1825. Between 1654 and 1730, it used…
This glimpse into an eighteenth-century German Jewish marriage ceremony offers an opportunity to consider how gender roles have changed for this vital ritual.
The oldest Jewish cemetery in the United States is located in New York City; the grave of Cantor Gershom Mendes Seixas can be seen here in the burial grounds of Congregation Shearith Israel.
The fibula, which replaced the toggle pin during the Iron Age, is similar to a modern safety pin. It had a main bent section with a clasp, which was often elaborately decorated, and a simple straight…
During the holiday of Sukkot, four plant species are used in rituals in the synagogue. One of these is the etrog (citron). While containers to protect the etrog later became more common, they were…
The Great Synagogue of Lutsk (Łuck) in Ukraine was built in 1626. Renaissance in style, the synagogue is an example of a fortress synagogue, built not only as a house of worship but also with the…
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…
