יערושע

Jewish art and history blog

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Jewish musicians in Ottoman Palestine, 1859.

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Amulet for protection of brides and their households, North Africa, n.d. Each of the orbs is engraved with a quotation from the Hebrew Bible:

בן פרת יוסף בן פרת עלי עין מזל טוב (Genesis 49:22) ישמך אלהים כשרה רבקה רחל ולאה (Ruth 4:11) רבות בנות עשו חיל ואת עלית על כלנה (Proverbs 31:29) קול ששון וקול שמחה קול חתן וקול כלה (Jeremiah 33:11) שקר החן והבל היפי אשה יראת יי היא תתהלל (Proverbs 31:30)

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Jewish children in traditional Caucasian dress Baku, Azerbaijan 1910 Collection of Eliezer Mizrachi, Carmiel Photographic Archive of the Isidore and Anne Falk Information Center for Jewish Art and Life, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem 

Accession number: 376-5009258

SUBJECTS: Images of children in Ethnic dress

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“جريمة قتْل في البيت” 1889، لوّحة للرسّام البوهيمي جاكوب شيكانيدر (1885-1924).. عنْ امرأة تنْتهي نهاية مأساويّة في الجيتو اليهوديّ في براغ حيثُ نشأ شيكانيدر وعاش أفقر سكان براغ في هذا الحيّ. كبقية لوّحاته تتناوَل هذه اللوّحة المرأة ككائن هَشّ، ضعيف ومُعذب. “Murder in the House” 1889 by Jakub Schikaneder a Bohemian painter (1855-1924), the painting depicts the tragic fate of women, attempt to express both realist and naturalist tendencies, it is inspired from the Jewish ghetto of Prague, as Schikaneder who came from a very poor family lived in the ghetto where the poorest of Prague’s inhabitants lived.

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Paris/Vel d'Hiv, Lisa Rosowsky, 2011.

Two-sided quilt. Cotton, polyester, paper, glass, wood, 40" x 40"

When the French police rounded up Jews in the summer of 1942, they were taken to the Vélodrome d’Hiver, where they languished for days without adequate food, water, or sanitation before being deported to internment camps outside the city. Meanwhile, non-Jewish residents went about their daily lives in wartime Paris. The German magazine Signal, eager to show the world that the Nazis were benevolent occupiers, hired the photographer André Zucca to photograph Parisians enjoying “life as usual.” To produce this propaganda, Zucca was provided with what was then extremely rare Agfacolor film. The contrast between what was happening behind the walls of the arena—which people claimed to know nothing about at the time—and what went on in the streets was remarkable: two sides of the same city. The Jews were sent by train from the Vélodrôme d’Hiver to Drancy, and from there to Auschwitz. Witnesses recall letters being thrown from the trains, requesting anyone who picked them up to deliver them to loved ones back in Paris. I have included printed facsimiles of some of these letters in the borders of this piece, as well as other paraphernalia of the Vichy régime.

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Page from a children’s memory book written in Terezin with a picture of a lightning bolt coming down into a walled city, 1943.

The translation of the poem reads:

“Further and further, always further; The battle for life pierces the armor; Don’t worry about thunder; To accept blows and not give in; Continuously come closer and closer." It is signed Petr Ganz.

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Terrified young Jewish girl, Rachel Levy, 7, fleeing from street with burning buildings as the Arabs sack the Holy City after its surrender during Palestinian Civil War. Photograph by John Phillips. Jerusalem, Israel, May 1948.

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Isaac Asknaziy, Moses in the desert, 1885. 

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Jewish refugees Harry Fiedler and Heim Leiter pose next to a potato vendor on a Shanghai street, circa 1945.

Harry Fiedler was born in Shanghai, a year-and-a-half after his parents fled from their home in Vienna during WWII. They secured visas from the Chinese embassy and passage on the Italian liner Conte Bianco Mano. Arriving in Shanghai in mid-December, they found temporary shelter at the Embankment building owned by Sir Victor Sassoon. The refugee shelter was administered by the International Committee for European Refugees, also known as the IC or Komor Committee. Subsequently, the family moved to the Hongkew district, where they remained through the period of the Hongkew ghetto (1943-1945). The family emigrated to Canada in October 1949, one week before the Communist takeover of Shanghai.

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Israeli immigrants from Algeria, Yemen, Morocco, India, and Iran. More photo scans on the subject of Israeli immigration here.

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Bar Mitzvah in Tbilisi, Georgia, 1980. Nodar Djindjihashvili 

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Ma’a’seh Toviyah, Venice, 1708. Toviyah Kats (ca. 1652-1729)

This illustration from a Hebrew encyclopedia pairs the interior of a human interior with the interior of a house, a visual metaphor: the organs, like rooms in a house, have different functions. Kats, one of the first Jews to study medicine at a German university, completed his degree at Padua and served as court physician to the Ottoman Sultan.

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Folios from the Rothschild Mahzor, Florence, 1490. Scribe: Abraham Judah of Camerino

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Rare photos of Bukharan Jews in Samarkand, 1870.

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Scroll of Esther, Venice, 18th century

This Venetian eighteenth century Scroll of Esther is enclosed within an elegant tubular scrolled filigree case. The cylindrical case of delicate silver filigree is beautifully decorated with floral motifs, with a gilded, flower-shaped element on top. In contrast to its richly ornamented case, the parchment scroll is very simple and has no decorations around the handwritten text. 

U. Nahon Museum of Jewish Italian Art Gift of Mrs. Zaban in memory of her parents, who were murdered in Auschwitz. Trieste, 1987 

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Zrelishscha (Entertainment), no. 89 (June 1924). 

The cover of this Moscow journal features a montage by I. Makhlis celebrating the GOSET (Moscow State Yiddish Theater), with Aleksandr Granovskii as the locomotive that pulls the train and actor Solomon Mikhoels as the conductor atop the engine. (YIVO)

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Rabbi contemplating a lit cigar /  Inspecting the Etrog by Maurycy Trebacz (1861 – 1941)