The traditional Jewish marriage contract, signed during the wedding ceremony, defines marriage as the husband’s acquisition of his wife. Note how the woman’s face remains covered by her future husband’s prayer shawl. This prevents the viewer from seeing the face of the bride and gaining any insight into her experience of the ceremony. There is also a clear separation of men and women, with a male figure officiating at the marriage. Aspects of this depiction, such as the clothing worn by the attendees, reveal early signs of modernity’s influence on Jewish culture that would ultimately challenge gender norms and reshape the Jewish wedding in some streams of Jewish practice.
What aspects of this eighteenth-century Jewish wedding might you expect to see in a modern wedding ceremony?
Can you find the wedding/marriage stone in this image (look near the right corner of the huppah.) What do you think this stone (called Treustein in German) might have been used for?
If we could see the bride’s face in the image, how do you imagine it would be depicted?
These small Torah finials, decorated with silver repoussé and dark- and light-blue enamel, originated in Persia. They are further adorned with slender flowers and graceful geometric patterns.
The funeral of the lady put Buenos Aires into suspended animation. Past and future were linked by the deterioration of some buildings and the addition of a few new ones that never went beyond the…
Don Antonio Lopes Suasso (1614–1685) was born in Bordeaux, one of ten children born to New Christian parents of Portuguese Jewish origin. Apparently, his parents intended for Antonio to enter the…