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This maḥzor (holiday prayer book), containing the Jewish prayers according to the Italian rite, was written by the scribe Eliezer ben Abraham of Pisa, for Yema, the widow of Moses of Modena (referred…
In 1583, Mattetiah ben David Spagnolo completed this illuminated Haggadah for Leon ben Judah Bili. Greek (Romaniote/Byzantine) Jews had lived on the island of Crete since the Second Temple period…
Moses ben Abraham Pescarol’s illuminated scroll of Esther, completed in Ferrara, constitutes one of the oldest and most unusual examples of illustrated manuscripts of this biblical book, which is…
Adorned with a lush vegetative frame and putti (cherubs) carrying banners, this ketubah (marriage contract) marks the wedding of David and Dona Rachel Curiel, prominent members of Amsterdam’s…
Hebrew manuscript illustration underwent a revival in eighteenth-century Germany and Central Europe. As wealthy Jews began to commission such manuscripts, a school of scribes and artists emerged. This…
This siddur from Greece contains the prayers of the Romaniote (Greek-speaking Jewish) community of the eastern Mediterranean. It is open at a piyyut (liturgical poem) called “God’s Beloved Daughter,”…
Like Torah scrolls, the scroll of the biblical book of Esther, read ritually in the synagogue on the holiday of Purim, must be completely unadorned. However, in the sixteenth century, for reasons…
This rare example of a Roman ketubah (marriage contract) from the seventeenth century was written on the occasion of the marriage of Menahem ben Samuel Zadik to Zevia, daughter of the prominent banker…
According to the colophon, the scribe in Prague who produced the Klausen Book of Psalms, Shabbetai Sheftel ben Zalman Auerbach (d. 1738), was descended from a family expelled from Vienna in 1669/70…
This manuscript copy of Sefer ha-kavanot (The Book of [Kabbalistic] Intentions [in Prayer and Performance of Precepts]) by Ḥayim Vital was written in Meknes, Morocco. The kabbalists in Safed stressed…
