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For German Jews, it was traditional in the wedding ceremony for the groom to perform the ritual of breaking a glass in remembrance of the destruction of the Temple by hurling it or banging it against…
In Ashkenazic communities, circumcision benches with two seats were sometimes used from the nineteenth century on, one for the sandek, the godfather on whose lap the baby boy is circumcised, and one…
This ewer and basin from Turkey were used to wash hands ritually during the Passover seder. Owned by the Benguiat family, a large and prominent Sephardic family in the Ottoman Empire, the objects…
This richly decorated Torah binder is thought to be from Rechnitz, based on its dedication as a gift from Gitl bat Samuel for Samuel ben Leib of Rechnitz in 1750. The Torah binder (also known as a…
The ketubah is a religious and legal contract of marriage. Traditionally, ketubot outline the conjugal and economic conditions of a marriage and are written in Aramaic. This ketubah was copied and…
This Biedermeier-style sofa from Danzig, with birch veneer over pine, may have been commissioned on the occasion of a marriage. The oval on the seat back contains an image of clasped hands, and the…
Paper cuts have been a tradition of Jewish folk art, with the earliest record of one dating to the fourteenth century. Given the widespread availability of paper in Europe by the mid-nineteenth…
They buried her into the darkness itself. As Miko was leaving the cemetery an old Jew took him by the hand. The man called out to his wife from the door: “I’ve brought him home . . . I couldn’t…
This Torah binder is one of the earliest examples from Italy. The binder (also known as a wimpel) was intended to accompany the male child through his lifetime, through the stages of his circumcision…
This Torah binder, made for boys at birth and later brought by young men as a symbol of participation in the synagogue, illustrates the fixed nature of traditional gender expectations.
