Torah Finials (Iraq)

This was not a very big courtyard, a longish but narrow one, like hundreds of others of this type in the thickly settled part of Jewish Warsaw. One side, the innermost one, was a two-story…

Reb Shmelke: Well, I can see that you are a clever man, so I will tell you the whole story in brief. [He takes a drink.] As you see me before you, I’m called Reb Smelke [Shmelke, as pronounced by a…