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 […]
Frances Sheftall- Wife of Highest Ranking Jewish Soldier in the American Revolution
In the library of Manhattan’s Fashion Institute of Technology is a 1998 master’s thesis entitled “The Wedding Costume of Frances Hart Sheftall.” Its author, Lisa Frisina, devotes page after page […]
Rebbetzin Malkah Rokeach, the Rebbetzin of the Sar Shalom of Belz
A story is related about a man with an ailing foot who had visited several doctors in order to ameliorate his pain. Not having success with them, he decided to […]