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The merchants’ and artisans’ guilds introduced into Eastern Europe beginning in the thirteenth century by German immigrants resembled those in Western Europe in their exclusion of Jews. Jews therefore…
After surviving the war, Miklós Adler returned to his hometown of Debrecen and created sixteen woodcuts, signing them Ben Binyamin (“son of Benjamin”) in honor of his father. In this woodcut…
This silver kiddush cup is believed to have belonged to Judah Loew. Known as the Maharal of Prague, Judah Loew ben Bezalel spent twenty years as rabbi in Moravia, moving in 1573 to the Bohemian…
According to the colophon, Natan Hammerschlag’s Ilan de-adam kadmon (Sefirotic Diagram of the First Man) was copied from the writings of Ḥayim Vital, the most prominent disciple of Isaac Luria…
This Torah ark curtain was donated to a synagogue in Prague by Leib ben Hezekiah Tausk Nagelstock and his wife Reykhl, daughter of Lemel Lichtenstadt. The composition of the curtain is stylized…
This amulet was presented by members of the Jewish community of Prague to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. At its center sits a seven-branched menorah surrounded by a prayer on Rudolf’s behalf…
This enameled glass beaker, belonging to the Polin Burial Society in Bohemia, is a fine example of the melding of Jewish and Bohemian art forms. It features painted figures carrying a body toward a…
Three representatives of the Prague Burial Society in the 1730s are pictured in these portraits: Jonas Jeitteles (1735–1806, the community’s official physician), Rabbi Leib Fayvel Dayan (another…
This elaborately decorated title page is from a book of Psalms created by the scribe Nathan ben Samson in Gross Meseritsch, Moravia (today Velké Meziříčí, Czech Republic). On the left is Aaron in his…
Despite gender restrictions, Jewish women played central roles as religious leaders in the early modern period. Meet the female leader of one of the most controversial cults in Jewish history.
