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Hanukkah lamp with High Priest kindling the Temple Menorah and Bar Kokhba coins, Sharar workshop, Bezalel, Jerusalem, 1914-29

Inscribed in Hebrew: “These lights are sacred”

The recurrent themes in works produced in the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts could be viewed as a logical consequence of the institution’s mission, namely to create “a new Hebrew style” that would represent a synthesis of the glorious biblical past with the contemporary Zionist vision of the return of the Jewish nation to its land. The images included the Tablets of the Law, the Temple menorah, and the Seven Species. Ancient coins - especially from the period of the Bar Kokhba Rebellion - were among the most prevalent motifs. Here they appear in the form of coin-like circles imprinted with images that include the facade of the Temple, a lulav bundle (palm frond with myrtle boughs and willow branches) and etrog (citron), an amphora, a vine leaf, three ears of grain, a harp, and a date palm tree.

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Interior of a Synagogue — Ludwig Blum (1891-1975), Israeli

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The largest online encyclopedia of Jewish art launched!

It’s called The Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art and can be found here!

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Love Star of David — Yaacov Agam, b. 1928, Israeli

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The Great Synagogue or The Sephardic Synagogue is the main synagogue of the Jewish community of Tbilisi, Georgia

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Hanukkah lamp made of tin intended for sardine cans, maker: Meir Ben Ammi, Mazagan, Morocco, ca. 1950

This unique Hanukkah lamp is made of strips of printed tin that were originally intended for sardine cans. Alms boxes were regularly made of the same material. In Morocco, canning sardines was a predominantly Jewish industry, especially along the western coast. The lamp was created by Meir Ben Ammi, who was born in Mazagan, Morocco, in 1910, where he worked with his father as a tinsmith. In 1955 he immigrated to Israel and settled in Beit She’an. He would often add the initials of a bride and groom on a lamp and present it to them as a wedding gift, but few of these gifts were actually retained after Hanukkah.

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Hanukkah lamp adorned with damascene technique, silversmith: Yacob Chekrone (1914–1979), Ghardaia, Algeria, 1933

This Hanukkah lamp was submitted by the artist Yacob Chekrone as a final project at the arts and crafts school established in the southern Algerian town of Ghardaïa by the Alliance Israélite Universelle. The AIU’s educational institutions provided academic and vocational training to the Jewish communities of the Mediterranean basin. One of the skills taught at the school was damascening, a sophisticated technique for inlaying different metals. Chekrone was born in Ghardaïa in 1914. After graduating in 1933, he established a workshop in town and sold his products to the occasional tourists. Years later, his works won prizes when displayed at a Paris exhibition. In 1943 he moved to Jerusalem, where he tried to earn a living as a craftsman, but failed due to the economic hardships of the time and ended up working as a construction worker.

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Afghan Jewish bride, ca. 1970s

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A-WA

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ship of theseus is so easy. Yeah it’s the same ship. Each piece that’s replaced is batel b’rov of the rest of the ship and becomes the same ship as the rest of it. The only problem would be if you replaced the ikkar of the ship in one go. Now of course there’s a machloket about what the ikkar is- some say the mast, while others say it’s a continuous rov of the hull, while still others say that it’s just enough of the hull that the ship couldn’t stay afloat regardless of whether it’s contiguous- but the principle is simple.

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From the series “Remnants: the last Jews of Poland.” Photographs by Tomasz Tomaszewski, 1980 - 1985

In a five-year voyage of personal discovery, Tomasz Tomaszewski and his wife Malgorzata Niezabitowska crisscrossed Poland to document the lonely survivors of the country’s once-vibrant Jewish community. ″To most Poles, especially those born after the war, Polish Jews are as abstract and as remote in history as the mysterious Etruscan people to contemporary Romans,″ the couple wrote in an introduction to the photo exhibit, ″But Jews lived here with us for 1,000 years. Normally, when a culture disappears, it takes a millenium or more. With Polish Jews it took only 20 years. What was left on this soil from the great and luxurious Jewish civilization? Our attempt to answer this question was for us a temptation and at the same time a need to face a painful and complex problem." Between 1980 and 1985, the couple drove more than 48,000 miles in their car, interviewed more than 3,000 people, and Tomaszewski took more than 7,000 photographs.

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Old Synagogue in Zakynthos, a city and a former municipality on the island of Zakynthos, Ionian Islands, Greece. 

During the 18th century, two synagogues were functioning on Zakynthos, the Candiot and the Sephardi. In 1953, the island was struck by a severe earthquake and the fire that followed it destroyed its entire Jewish quarter as well as its two synagogues. By 1954, the Jewish community of Zakynthos was dissolved. There remains only the site of the Candiot Synagogue and a memorial was placed in its courtyard indicating the place. (x) 

The text of the second image: This holy place, the Synagogue Shalom, destroyed by earthquake in 1953, is written on parchment in the records of our community.

 The third image is a close-up of the two memorials to Mayor Lucas Karrer and Metropolitan Bishop Chrysostomos, who were instrumental in saving the lives of Zakynthian Jews in 1943. See the story here. 

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Great Synagogue, Rome

credit u/zgido_syldg (reddit)

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Hineh ma tov 🔥

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Chanukah in the snowy woods