Anyone want to tell me about their experiences with kids and tefillin? In particular: If they lay tefillin, why you got them started doing it and when you started them What you told them about why we do it. If you lay tefillin and they don’t, how/why that works. Whether they play tefillin. Who in […]
This is an illustration from a larger poster paying tribute to the Jewish composer, Zavel Zilberts, special call number DR8-R22. The poster’s from Lodz, 1918; it’s in Yiddish, which is why I didn’t photograph all of it. What caught my eye–and hopefully also caught yours–was that the music is written right-to-left. Makes sense, given that […]
This is from the wedding of Julius Lorsch and Rebecka Cahn, special call number DR6-R36. A Hochzeits-Hagada, dated 1911, Fulda. I like the little photos stapled to the top here. Julius has a very traditional German Yekkish käppchen, and Rebecka looks like she has those over-the-ears buns that were in style in the 1920s. Julius […]
Regard, if you will, this photograph of a Torah scroll. That’s a Metro card under there. A Metro card is the same size as a credit card. This is a real handwritten originally-kosher sefer Torah, and it’s smaller than a credit card. It’s three inches high. Here’s another picture: Speechless? I was. When I took […]
Today we have a Shtar Halitza, which we might translate Contract promising release from levirate marriage. If you recall, Torah says that if I marry Reuven and he dies childless, I have to marry his brother Shimon in order to have children in Reuven’s name. If Shimon isn’t keen on that idea, he does halitza […]
DR8-R12b is a Tribute to Nathan Marcus Adler, from the Jewish community of Hanover. (Check out Wikipedia; he has an epic hat, and even more epic sideburns.) The Tribute is dated 1879, the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination (according to the JTS catalogue). As well as the numerical date, it has a nice Hebrew chronogram: […]
At Whole Foods the other week, I found this…It smells exactly like an etrog, but it looks like no etrog ever. Sniff it and become Cthulu!
Sometimes you see letters which look broken, pasul: But don’t freak out. Tilt it up, see what you can see. Candlewax tends to gleam. Candlewax you can generally crack off with a scalpel, or X-acto knife, or a plastic spoon if you’ve really got nothing else handy. Then you can take a blurry picture. A […]
Today’s picture is of someone’s bar mitzvah invitation, from the early 1980s. Note how the invitation is printed with blue stripes and trimmed with fringe trim exactly like the scarfy tallitot beloved of Reform shuls. Can’t decide if this is sort of cool or dreadfully cheesy. The point of bringing you this, though, is that […]
