Visual Moment | A (Torah) Scribe Goes to Washington
It’s one of the more unsavory parts of the Bible. Lot, after the destruction of Sodom, is seduced by his two daughters, who think they are the world’s sole survivors.
Visual Moment | The Beguiling Language of Dress
Ribbed moiré silk from Greece, tulle and silver-tinsel embroidery from Egypt, silk satin from Ottoman Palestine, indigo-dyed goat hair from Iraqi Kurdistan, brocaded silk ikat...
Visual Moment | The Ringelblum Archive
Even before the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto (1940-1943) knew of the “Final Solution,” they understood that their story needed to be preserved. Under the...
An Artist’s Secret, Now Fully Revealed
When Charlotte (called Lotte by her family) was eight years old, her mother died. At the time she was told the cause was influenza—the truth was kept a carefully guarded secret.
Visual Moment | A Forgotten Ottoman Way Station
The Ottomans ruled what is now Israel for 400 years, and during that time they made some iconic contributions to the man-made landscape. Sultan Suleiman I (a.k.a. Suleiman the Magnificent) completed the current walls of Jerusalem’s Old City in 1541. The Jaffa Clocktower, finished in 1903, was built to celebrate the silver jubilee of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Over time, innumerable Ottoman buildings have been lost, replaced by those of British or Israeli design, just as they in turn had replaced those of the Crusaders, Mamluks, Byzantines, Romans, Hasmoneans, Greeks, ancient Israelites, Babylonians, Assyrians and Philistines.
A Rare Peek Into a Renowned Library’s Vault
The extraordinary works in this exhibition are rarely seen, and this is their first time in America.
Visual Moment // Jerusalem, 1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven
From the years 1000 to 1400 CE, a kind of Jerusalem mania captivated much of the world. This fervor drew thousands of people from across the globe to the Holy City…
Venice, the Jews and Europe: 1516-2016
On March 29, 1516, the Venetian Senate, under the leadership of Doge Leonardo Loredan, decreed that “Jews must all live together” in a guarded and enclosed area of the city…
Visual Moment // Odessa
“To this day I remember, feel, and love this town…I love this town because I grew up in it, was happy, melancholy, and dreamy in it. Passionately and singularly dreamy.”
Reframing Roman Vishniac’s Legacy
Maya Benton was a high school senior living in Los Angeles when the Russian-American photographer Roman Vishniac’s first posthumous book, To Give Them Light, came out in 1993. Renowned for his iconic images of Eastern European Jews taken between the two World Wars, Vishniac had died three years earlier at age 92.
Visual Moment // Moshe Safdie
In 1967 a 29-year-old Israeli-born Canadian architect by the name of Moshe Safdie gained international recognition for his groundbreaking, visionary design for high-quality, affordable urban housing.
Visual Moment // History, Demolished
The world watched in horror earlier this year when videos went viral showing ISIS bulldozing the 3,000-year-old ruins of the ancient Assyrian capital of Nimrud in Iraq—a city so old it is mentioned in Genesis. The militants toppled walls and bas-reliefs, sledgehammered statues and used a bulldozer to overturn and shatter a majestic human-headed, winged bull statue that had long guarded the city’s Nergal Gate…