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Between 1723 and 1737, illustrator Bernard Picart partnered with the Dutch bookseller, editor, and publisher Jean-Frédéric Bernard on Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (R…
27. On the eve of the Sabbath they light the oven in the home of the beadle, where they bake cakes and roast what is required for the Sabbath. They also boil the pots for the needs of…
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…
Made in Prague, this Torah ark curtain is exquisitely ornamented with embroidery of silk, silk velvet, and metallic thread. Set against a vivid red background, its borders and central panel are…
[ . . . ] 5. When one wishes to go to the synagogue, he should say, “I will go to the synagogue for the sake of the unification of the presence of the Holy One and to raise it from its fall,” as…
At the beginning of Purim, after evening prayer near the time when it gets dark, the charity warden brings with him an assortment of candles that are painted and nice looking, and he…
An eruv (or eruv ḥatserot, merger of domains) is a symbolic expansion of an area outside a single home into a larger private domain. Within that eruv, certain activities prohibited in the public…
Question: Since it is true from time immemorial and ancient years that we observe the customs of our ancestors, as is the practice of the Musta‘arabim [Arabic-speaking Jews] everywhere among the Jews…
It is not the plan of this essay to discuss the millennium-old problem of faith and reason. I want instead to focus attention on a human-life situation in which the man of faith as an individual…
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…
