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The first Jewish community was established in Kingston, Jamaica by refugees from Spain and Portugal after 1492. This tombstone in the cemetery of She‘are Shalom Synagogue marks the grave of Abraham…
The panel shown here is part of an obelisk that contains a long inscription summarizing the triumphs of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (r. 858–824 BCE) until the thirty-third year of his reign. The…
Mordechai Meisel (1528–1601) was a court Jew, merchant, philanthropist and builder in Prague. Meisel became a member of the Prague Jewish Communal Council in 1576 and later served as its head. This is…
Tombstone of Hendl bat Eberl Geronim, wife of the Court Jew Jacob Bassevi von Treuenberg (1570–1634), in the Jewish cemetery in Prague. The Hebrew date on the top part of the stone indicates that she…
Tombstone of Shifra Tamari (d. 1565), Padua, Italy. In the early modern period, most Jewish tombstones in Italy were Italian Renaissance in style. Hebrew epitaph poems, like the one on this gravestone…
Uzziah’s reinterment inscription, Jerusalem. King Uzziah (reigned 785–733 BCE) was a leper and therefore, according to the book of Chronicles, could not be buried in the royal tombs and so had to be…
Sarah Soncino, who died in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul, Turkey) in 1735, was a member of the prominent Soncino family, which established a printing press there in 1530, one in a long line of…
This tombstone of Joel ben Ze’ev, who died in 1744, is topped with a carving of an eagle. Winged griffins and eagles symbolize God’s power. Only the wealthy could afford stone markers before the…
This tombstone of Isaac ben Ḥayim, who died in 1728, includes (at the top) a pair of deer and a pair of lions, animal carvings that often appeared on Jewish tombstones in Eastern Europe. They…
The Jewish cemetery of Altona is made up of two separate cemeteries, one Sephardic (established in 1611 and later expanded several times) and one Ashkenazic (1616, also later expanded). In the…
