The Jewish Pope in the Rosh Hashana Machzor
As you open your machzor this Rosh Hashanah, something you will probably not expect to find is a Jewish pope. But if you read carefully, that’s exactly what you’ll see. […]
Papyrus Scroll Sheds Light on Celebration of Pesach 2,500 Years Ago
Exiled after the destruction of the first Beis Hamikdash, a Jewish community seeks guidance “The Passover Letter” is the name given by scholars to a papyrus scroll discovered over a […]
The Jews of Gibraltar
Gibraltar occupies a small peninsula jutting out from the Spanish coast. Its town is situated at the foot and on the lowest levels of the western face of the Rock, […]
Cerf Berr of Medelsheim
Many talmidei chachamim around the world today enhance their learning of Gemara with the Yad David commentary composed by Rabbi Yosef David Sinzheim (recently published by Machon Yerushalayim), first Chief […]
Baron Naftali Hertz (Horace) Gunzburg – the Russian Rothschild
On March 13, 1881, Czar Alexander II was assassinated in St. Petersburg when a bomb thrown at his carriage exploded. He had been traveling home to his imperial residence at […]
A French Gadol: Rabbi Yosef Dovid Sinzheim
Today, with a Jewish population of 500,000, France is Europe’s largest Jewish community. However, because of the current spate of anti-Semitic violent acts, many French Jews have begun to flee […]
Anne Edith (Chana Yehudis) Landau
Anne Edith Landau (1873-1945) was described in a 1903 London Jewish Chronicle article as the first Jewish woman ever to be arrested in Palestine, and the only Jewess on whose […]
Rachel Luzzatto Morpurgo
Two hundred years ago, when Eretz Yisroel was still under the Ottoman Empire (which official language was Turkish) and Hebrew had not yet been revived as a spoken tongue, it […]
Flora Randegger Friedenberg, Italian Diarist and Translator
More than one hundred fifty years ago, before the invention of the car or airplane, it was rare to find a single woman attempt to travel the long dangerous journey […]
Tanna’it Osnat Barazani Mizrachi
Known as the wisest and holiest woman in Kurdistan, (see side bar on Kurdish Jewry) seventeenth century Osnat (Barazani) Mizrachi was not only renown for her Torah wisdom but both […]