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The first Ashkenazi Jews to settle in Amsterdam, refugees from the Chmielnicki uprising in Poland and the Thirty Years War, initially joined the Sephardi congregation there. In 1671, they established…
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 Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest is the largest synagogue in Europe, and the second largest in the world, capable of accommodating three thousand people. The Moorish- and Byzantine-inspired…
In this baroque Christian altarpiece that Anton Raphael Mengs painted for the Catholic church, the Colegiata of Castrojeriz, which is near Burgos, Spain, the Madonna is holding an open book. The angel…
Wooden synagogues were a distinctive style of vernacular architecture that first developed in the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the sixteenth century and then flourished in the…
To celebrate the opening of the Esnoga synagogue in Amsterdam in 1675, the Sephardic community commissioned the distinguished artist Romeyn de Hooghe to depict its dedication. In 1670, Amsterdam’s…
The Pinkas Synagogue is the second-oldest extant synagogue in Prague. It is believed that a synagogue was found in that location as early as 1492. The structure now housing the synagogue was founded…
Salamone de Rossi (1570–1630), composer, singer, violinist, and musician in the Gonzaga court in Mantua, is best known for his introduction of polyphony into synagogue music. Composer Samuel Naumbourg…
