Showing Results 41 - 50 of 59
This wooden Torah ark and its two cathedrae (chairs), from the Scuola Grande Synagogue in Mantua, Italy, date from 1543. Decorated with gilt carvings and architectural elements, they were meant to…
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 Old Synagogue (Alte-Schul, or Stara Bożnica) of Kraków is located in the Kazimierz district of the city. Because it was in a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth vulnerable to attack by…
The Scuola Italiana is one of five synagogues in the Venetian ghetto, and its smallest. In 1575, the Italian Jewish community established the synagogue in a preexisting building because of a law…
The Klausen Synagogue in Prague gets its name from the kloyz (a complex of buildings used for religious purposes, including synagogues) that originally stood on its site, erected in the 1570s. The…
This Torah crown from Suriname was made originally in Amsterdam by Evert van Heerdan (active 1644–1683). It is a fine repoussé piece exemplifying the mastery of Dutch silverwork. Inscribed on the…
This partially gilt-silver Torah crown from Poland is studded with semi-precious stones. Its two-tiered base is typical of Torah crowns from Eastern Europe. It is inscribed in Hebrew with the words,…
The Vittorio Veneto Synagogue, in a town near Venice, was constructed on the second and third floors of a modest house. Elements of the Italian Baroque style are visible in the interior, especially in…
The wooden synagogue in Chodorów, near Lvov, Poland (now Khodoriv, near Lviv, Ukraine), built in 1652, was destroyed by the Nazis. The austere outside—shown here in an early twentieth-century, black…
The Synagogue Mejor is a synagogue in Bursa, Turkey, built in the late fifteenth century by Jews who settled in the Ottoman Empire after being expelled from Majorca. Its name “Mejor” commemorates the…
