Clik here to view.
Yiddish
Yiddish theater In the early thirteenth century Ashkenazic Jews living in Germany, Austria, Bohemia and other Germanic lands began to speak a dialect of low German that soon turned itself into a jargon...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev
Tomb of Rabbi Levi Yitzchok, the Chassidic Rebbe who became famous for always defending otherwise indefensible Jews and see the good in every situation. His tomb is still visited today by thousands of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reviving the Messiah
Among its revolutionary changes, the Chassidic movement reawakened within the Jewish people the tremendous longings for the Messiah and the Messianic era. After the debacles of Shabbetai Tzvi, Jacob...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Napoleon’s Sanhedrin
In 1807, Napoleon attempted to revive the Great Sanhedrin, the Supreme Court of the Jewish people in Biblical and Talmudic times, but which had been disbanded centuries earlier due to persecution....
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Name Game Among Jews
Certain Jewish communities would copy every name from the tombstones in the cemetery, and when the government came to town looking for people, they would tell the officials the person they wanted was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Czarist Attempts At Converting Jews
Czar Alexander gave Jews incentives to convert. But during his incentive period more Russians converted to Judaism than Jewish to Russian Orthodoxy! In 1817, Czar Alexander was convinced by the Holy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Cantonist Decree
During the reign of Czar Nicholas I, Jewish were required to fill a quota of boys aged between 12-25 (it was 18-35 for non-Jews) for the Russian army to serve for a period of 25 years. It was, in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wandering Jews
The Hasidic Movement ignited Jewish masses in remote communities with love of Judaism, but the movement had its roots in an earlier era of wandering Jews. In the early 1700s there existed in Eastern...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Three Barons
Jews of the Vineland, NJ farming community In Europe in the 19th century, there were three Jews whose wealth and social connections earned them a title of nobility: baron. Each of the three barons...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Vishniac’s Vision
Images from Roman Vishnaic’s “A Vanished World.” In the 1930s Vishnaic went through Poland, Romania and the Carpathian area taking pictures of Jewish life. There are photos of Jewish children going to...
View Article
