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The use of wall niches for Torah scrolls was a feature of some of the earliest synagogues and continues today in Mizrahi communities. This striking faience-tile mosaic structure would have decorated a…
This Torah ark, installed in a synagogue in the Italian town of Urbino, is a fine example of Renaissance Judaica. Carved from walnut in the early sixteenth century, the ark belonged to the Sephardic…
Home to a Jewish community from at least the thirteenth century, Pesaro later became the refuge of Portuguese and Spanish Jews in the sixteenth century. In 1642, a few years after the town’s Jews were…
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…
This photo shows a reconstruction of the cella, or inner sanctum, of the Arad sanctuary as it is thought to have appeared in its last phase. At the rear stands a 35-inch-tall (90 cm) pillar of…
The Rema Synagogue, named after the famous rabbi and scholar Moses Isserles (known by the Hebrew acronym “Rema”), was built in 1553 in the city of Kazimierz (today a district of Kraków). It was…
These two modern depictions of the Temple built by King Solomon on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem are based on biblical descriptions and pertinent archaeological evidence from other sanctuaries and…
This limestone model of a shrine, around 8 inches wide, 10 inches long, and 14 inches high (20 cm × 25 cm × 35 cm), was painted red. The façade features a triple-recessed door frame, above which is a…
The mannerist and baroque Great Synagogue of Tykocin, Poland, was built in 1642. The synagogue was damaged during World War II and in the years following, but was restored in the 1970s, including its…
The Torah ark in the synagogue of Mariampol was surmounted by tablets of the law flanked by rampant lions and topped with a crown, with hands making the priestly blessing. After World War II, Soviet…
