Poland

Shtreimel Variations: The History of a Hat

Though synonymous with Hasidic Jewry, the shtreimel was originally more of a status symbol than a religious one. And not...

Many of the figures seated around the Seder table pictured in Szyk’s Haggada were portraits of real people at a Seder he attended in Poland not long before World War II, in the house of Rabbi Eliezer Gershon Friedenson

Painting Propaganda

Artist, illuminator and Zionist propagandist Arthur Szyk was as famous for his anti-Nazi caricatures as for his storybook illustrations,...

One of the earliest extant depictions of a Purim spiel: woodcut, Holland, 1657

Topsy Turvy

An annual outlet for the pressure cooker of the medieval Jewish community, the Purim spiel subtly subverts the power structures...

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