Showing Results 61 - 70 of 100
We had more or less forgotten them. We wanted to convince ourselves, without really trying to find out, that the march of time had left them satisfied, happy, at peace. The quarrels provoked by…
Certainly, the collective will of diaspora Jews is assured neither of success nor of perennial life. It is situated in history, subject to the erosion and constraints of history, equally conditioned…
The only garden left in our walled-up town was the old cemetery, whose earliest graves dated back to the thirteenth century. It was densely overgrown. Picking one’s way to its remoter corners meant…
Madame Perrin told them that her son had died a hero’s death in Normandy as the Germans advanced; she had received permission to visit his grave. She complained at great length about the cost of this…
[ . . . ] Braendel dragged the poor woman into the smoky room, which stank of sweat, beer, and wine, and cried out in a loud voice, “Aren’t you ashamed, you children of honest Jews, to drink and…
[ . . . ] The sofer’s work is poorly compensated. There is an old proverb about how the soferim never grow wealthy in the land of Israel. I don’t know who gave birth to that pearl detached from the…
Laws are always tainted by the passions and the prejudices of the legislator.
—Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws
In 1807, Mordecai Blum, his wife Rebecca, and his son David were living in a…
At a time when the worship of the dead letter degenerated into idolatry; at a time when men passed their lives in counting the verses, the words and the letters of the Law, at a time when the official…
Charles-Valentin Alkan was the first composer to incorporate Jewish melodies in art music. His “Ancienne melodie de la synagogue,” a prelude for solo piano or organ, was published in 1847, along with…
A depiction of a Jew from Lorraine, engraved by Sébastien Leclerc in Paris. The antisemitic inscription, which alludes to the Jewish man having acquired wealth by deceptive means, is a rhymed couplet…
