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On the third new moon after the Israelites had gone forth from the land of Egypt, on that very day, they entered the wilderness of Sinai. Having journeyed from Rephidim, they entered the…
When you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take some of every first fruit of the soil, which you harvest from the land…
Shabbetai Tzvi was the central figure of a messianic movement that swept the Jewish world in the mid-seventeenth century. Born in Izmir (Smyrna), as an adolescent Shabbetai Tzvi embarked on the study…
In the Sephardic tradition, a “marriage contract” (ketubah), a symbolic betrothal of God and Israel, is read before the Torah reading on the first day of the holiday of Shavuot, which celebrates the…
The words of the perfect scholar, the divine kabbalist, R. Solomon ha-Levi Alkabetz (may the memory of the righteous be for the life of the World-to-Come):
Know that the pious one and myself, his…
During the days of Shavuot, quite a number of householders, accompanied by their sons, their wives and their infant children, would rise early each morning and walk outside the city, and outside the…
In the days when the chieftains ruled, there was a famine in the land; and a man of Bethlehem in Judah, with his wife and two sons, went to reside in the country of Moab. The man’s name…
The frontispiece of this book of penitential prayers published in Amsterdam, Tikun li-kro’ laylah va-yom (A Tikkun to Read Day and Night) has a three-tiered illustration. The top level depicts Moses…
This silver, repoussé, punched, engraved, and cast Torah shield, decorated with flowers and bunches of grapes, from Metz, France, is inscribed in Hebrew: C[rown of] T[orah]; Festival of Shavuot.
Shearith Israel was the first Jewish congregation established in North America, and the only Jewish congregation in New York City from 1654 until 1825. Between 1654 and 1730, it met in rented quarters…
