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Toward the end of the first century, in the spring of the last year of the reign of the Emperor Vespasian, two entries were made in the Roman archives of the district of Galilee. The first…
There was once a Mohel, who was very avaricious. He had inherited some money, and his sole pleasure was to augment his wealth, and count his gold and silver coin. In his own opinion he was a religious…
Between 1723 and 1737, illustrator Bernard Picart partnered with the Dutch bookseller and publisher Jean-Frédéric Bernard on Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (Religious…
This silver plate from Padua, Italy, was made for use in the brit milah, the circumcision ritual celebrated when a baby boy is eight days old. In this detailed depiction of the ritual, the baby seems…
This is the frontispiece of a 1661 edition of Synagoga Judaica, a study of the customs and culture of German Jewry by Christian Hebraist, and polemical critic of Judaism, Johannes Buxtorf the Elder…
[ . . . ] And all the more so with our brethren the people of Israel who come from the lands of the dispersion, who do not know and have not seen the way in which every person called by the name of…
It has been clarified for you that the survival of Israel in their state of exile depends on their unity and their connection with each other, and their separation from the idolatrous nations. It is…
[47] Now all that remains is to reply to certain arguments by which they want to persuade themselves that the choice of the Hebrews was not for a time, and in relation only to their state, but eternal…
When I was born, Robert G. Mehlman was at the peak of his glory. He was more than a major talent. But within five years there wasn’t much of that glory left, and my mother sometimes compared him to a…
24 December. Sunday. [ . . . ]
This morning my nephew’s circumcision. A short, bow-legged man, Austerlitz, who already has 2,800 circumcisions behind him, deftly executed the affair. The oper is…