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Jews first settled in Kaifeng, the capital of Henan province in central China, before 1127. According to scholars, they had come from India or Persia, spoke Persian, and worked as cotton dyers and…
This Haggadah was commissioned by Nathan ben Isaac Oppenheim of Vienna, a member of a prominent family of Court Jews. Its title page features a miniature of the sacrifice of Isaac being prevented by…
Like Torah scrolls, the scroll of the biblical book of Esther, read ritually in the synagogue on the holiday of Purim, must be completely unadorned. However, in the sixteenth century, for reasons…
This siddur from Greece contains the prayers of the Romaniote (Greek-speaking Jewish) community of the eastern Mediterranean. It is open at a piyyut (liturgical poem) called “God’s Beloved Daughter,”…
This scroll of Esther from Germany, created for use on the holiday of Purim, is extensively decorated, with illustrations of biblical scenes from the Esther story, as well as various flora and fauna…
According to the colophon, the scribe in Prague who produced the Klausen Book of Psalms, Shabbetai Sheftel ben Zalman Auerbach (d. 1738), was descended from a family expelled from Vienna in 1669/70…
This manuscript page of Deuteronomy 1:1–7 is from a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Yiddish, from Italy. It is decorated with two storks and an ornate chapter heading with the opening word of the…
One of Charlotte von Rothschild’s most outstanding works is the only known nineteenth-century Hebrew manuscript to have been illuminated by a woman.
This ketubah (marriage contract) from Padua, Italy, marks the marriage of Samuel ben Gerson ha-Kohen me-ha-ḥazanim (“of the cantors,” or Cantarini) and Colomba bat David Aziz. The groom was a…
Traditionally, until increased access to doctors and hospitals was available after World War I, many East European Jews relied on folk medicine, which included amulets and magical cures. Books, like…
