Showing Results 21 - 30 of 38
The Book of Esther recounts the story of the rescue of the Jews of Persia from the machinations of the evil vizier Haman, who sought to annihilate them. Thanks to the bravery and cleverness of the…
Queen Esther said to herself What is there to fear? We move in our orbits like the stars.
But in the night looking at the black fields and river she could not help thinking of Vashti’s white cheeks…
The scroll (megillah) of Esther is read out loud on the holiday of Purim. This example, from Baghdad, is hand painted, with an ornate design in which bands of flowers frame the text. It is rolled on a…
It happened in the days of Ahasuerus—that Ahasuerus who reigned over a hundred and twenty-seven provinces from India to Ethiopia. In those days, when King Ahasuerus occupied the royal…
Moses ben Abraham Pescarol’s illuminated scroll of Esther, completed in Ferrara, constitutes one of the oldest and most unusual examples of illustrated manuscripts of this biblical book, which is…
This Purim tray from the seventeenth century was made in Hamburg, Germany. A fine repoussé piece, its center is adorned with a court scene, complete with a ruler sitting on a raised throne, surrounded…
The book of Esther is chanted aloud from a scroll (megillah) on the holiday of Purim. This example from the Netherlands is lavishly decorated, with the Hebrew text framed by arcades between which are…
These woodcuts appeared in Sefer minhagim (Book of Customs), a very popular Yiddish book published by Giovanni di Gara, the leading publisher of Jewish books in Venice from 1564 to 1609. It was the…
This photograph of two Jews reduces them to an abstraction, a single black shape, in a composition that includes the round shapes of manhole covers, the curving black lines of a street grating, and…
Purim plays (Purim shpiln, in Yiddish), sometimes also called Esther plays, have been known since the fifteenth century in both Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities. These folk plays were performed on…
