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Reb Shmelke:
Well, I can see that you are a clever man, so I will tell you the whole story in brief. [He takes a drink.] As you see me before you, I’m called Reb Smelke [Shmelke, as pronounced by a…
The text on this inscription, dating from the establishment of the Rema Synagogue in Krákow, reads, in part: “The man, R. Israel ben Joseph (of blessed memory), gathered his strength, for the honor of…
There were once hundreds of wooden synagogues in Poland and Lithuania, but only a very few examples of this particularly Jewish form of architecture have survived. The Zabłudów synagogue, built around…
This Hanukkah lamp from Poland is made from brass and would likely have been placed near the Torah ark in a synagogue. An engraved and cast eagle sits above a domed cupola, representing gratitude and…
Hear, O Israel, descendants of holy ones: see that newcomers have recently arrived intending to make grapes, but instead have produced wild grapes [see Isaiah 5:2]. There is no local foundation for…
The Rema Synagogue, named after the famous rabbi and scholar Moses Isserles (known by the Hebrew acronym “Rema”), was built in 1553 in the city of Kazimierz (today a district of Kraków). It was…
The ceiling and wall paintings in the baroque-style Kupa Synagogue in Kraków, which dates from 1643, were damaged during World War II and in a pogrom that occurred in August 1945 immediately following…
The Isaac (or Izaak) Synagogue in Kraków was built in 1638–1644. Sources differ about who designed the building, but it was likely either the Italian architect Francisco Olivieri or Swiss-born…
This Torah shield contains a rare example of a personal inscription by the silversmith, stating: “This is the work of my hands in which I take pride, Ze’ev ben Abraham [?], silversmith from Piotrków…
Every now and then a different door in the long corridor of the IsPolKom [Executive Committee] would yawn open, partly exposing the profiles of the office workers, emit a hum of muffled chatter and…