Home > Issues

Issues

Rabbinic But Different – Dura-Europos Synagogue

Haggai Misgav

The people and animals in the Dura-Europos murals might reflect a community’s disregard for rabbinic strictures but can’t be seen as evidence of non-rabbinic Judaism in third-century Syria Haggai Misgav Since its discovery in 1932,...

ArticlesIssue 60 | February 2022

Imperial Synagogue – Dura-Europos Synagogue

Haggai Olshanetsky

Once upon a time in southeastern Syria, the Roman and Sassanid-Persian empires battled over a city nestled among the dunes. Its ruins revealed a synagogue with some of the most exquisite murals ever seen. Who...

ArticlesIssue 60 | February 2022

From the Archives | From Morocco to Amsterdam

Yochai Ben-Ghedalia

The memoir of an anonymous scholar features miracles, mishaps, and multiple wives as his thirst for Jewish learning drives him from home Yochai Ben-Ghedalia Highly Respected Professor, This copy, which I made in my student...

ColumnsIssue 59 | November 2021

Portrait of a People | A Fleeting Guest

Naomi Samuel

Naomi Samuel Jewish Wedding in MoroccoOil on canvas140 x 105 cmParis, 1839Louvres Museum, Paris Eugène Delacroix1798–1863 OrientalismRomantic Western depictions of everyday life in the Near East, beginning largely with Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt and the...

ColumnsIssue 59 | November 2021

Quick Looks at Books

Sara Jo Ben-Zvi

Medicine: From Biblical Canaan to Modern Israel | Cities of Splendour in the Shaping of Sephardi History | Memorable Sephardi Voices | Contextualizing Jewish Temples Sara Jo Ben-Zvi Medicine: From Biblical Canaan to Modern Israel...

ColumnsIssue 59 | November 2021

Tale of a Trail | Khirbet Bak, Mount Meron

Tamar HaYardeni

Israel Bak wasn’t one to give up. The first printer in Ottoman Palestine, he also established an agricultural village on Mount Meron in a series of none-too-successful pioneering endeavors Tamar HaYardeni Where To? Khirbet Bak,...

ColumnsIssue 59 | November 2021

Uphill Battle – Temple Mount: Modern Jewish Attitudes

Dotan Goren

Today most Jews visiting the Temple Mount are religious and of a certain stripe, but when the site opened to non-Muslims in the mid-19th century, it was generally secular Jewish tourists who seized the opportunity...

ArticlesIssue 61 | May 2022

Voices of the Past | Rabbi Moses Son of Nahman

Rabbi Moses Son of Nahman

Two letters sent by Nahmanides to his sons provide a glimpse of his personal life Nahmanides’ scant surviving personal correspondence includes the following two letters to his sons, Nahman and Shlomo (Solomon). Writing to Nahman...

ColumnsIssue 62 | September 2022

Egypt’s Exodus – Egyptian Rule in Canaan

Assaf Avraham

Though there’s no evidence outside the Bible for the Jewish people’s sojourn in Egypt, historical and archaeological finds from the end of the late Bronze Age in the land of Israel indicate that Egyptian domination...

ArticlesIssue 76 | March 2026

Murder in the Holy City – Jacob Israel de Haan

Pini Dunner

Though Jacob de Haan’s assassination at the entrance to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center shocked the Jewish world, the victim himself elicited little direct sympathy. What prompted London-based rabbi and maverick journalist Joseph Shapotshnick to...

ArticlesIssue 61 | May 2022

Tale of a Trail | Cave of the Patriarchs

Tamar HaYardeni

Generations of rulers and believers have added layers of construction to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, but mystery still shrouds the original cave’s dark depths Tamar HaYardeni Where To? Cave of the PatriarchsSacred...

ColumnsIssue 62 | September 2022

Issues

Rabbinic But Different – Dura-Europos Synagogue

Imperial Synagogue – Dura-Europos Synagogue