Download or read book Treasures of Jewish Art written by Jacobo Furman and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Jewish Treasures from Oxford Libraries written by Rebecca Abrams and published by Bodleian Library. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representing four centuries of collecting and 1000 years of Jewish history, this book brings together extraordinary Hebrew manuscripts and rare books from the Bodleian Library and Oxford colleges. Highlights of the collections include a fragment of Maimonides' autograph draft of the Mishneh Torah; the earliest dated fragment of the Talmud, exquisitely illuminated manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible; stunning festival prayerbooks and one of the oldest surviving Jewish seals in England. Lavishly illustrated essays by experts in the field bring to life the outstanding works contained in the collections, as well as the personalities and diverse motivations of their original collectors, who include Archbishop William Laud, John Selden, Edward Pococke, Robert Huntington, Venetian Jesuit Matteo Canonici, Benjamin Kennicott and Rabbi David Oppenheim. Saved for posterity by religious scholarship, intellectual rivalry and political ambition, these extraordinary collections also detail the consumption and circulation of knowledge across the centuries, forming a social and cultural history of objects moved across borders, from person to person. Together, they offer a fascinating journey through Jewish intellectual and social history from the tenth to the twentieth century.
Download or read book Jewish Treasures of the Caribbean written by and published by Schiffer Publishing. This book was released on 2016-12-28 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This photographic essay highlights the little-known history of the first Jewish communities established in the New World dating to the 1600s. Award-winning photographer Wyatt Gallery documents the oldest synagogues and cemeteries on Barbados, Curacao, Jamaica, St. Thomas, St. Eustatius, and Suriname through his singular style of photos with histories written by Stanley Mirvis. The enclaves, formed by Sephardic Jews who fled the Catholic Inquisition, became so influential that they helped fuel the success of the American Revolution and partially finance the first synagogues in New York City and Newport, Rhode Island. Once home to thousands, today these historic communities are rapidly dwindling and could soon disappear. Only five historic synagogues remain in use, and many of the cemeteries have been damaged or lost to natural disasters, vandalism, and pollution. These photographs bear witness to the legacy of New World Judaism and provide a record for future generations.
Download or read book The Jewish World written by Alla Efimova and published by Skira. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Director's introduction by Alla Efimova -- Benedictions -- Protections -- Illuminations -- Sensations -- Expansions -- Expulsions -- Reparations -- Curator's afterword by Francesco Spagnolo -- Origins of artifacts
Download or read book Plunder written by Menachem Kaiser and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Critics’ Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Biography From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his family’s apartment building in Poland—and of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows Menachem Kaiser’s brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather’s former battle to reclaim the family’s apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as “The Killer.” A surprise discovery—that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex—leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance—material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.
Download or read book Sacred Treasure The Cairo Genizah written by Rabbi Mark S. Glickman and published by Jewish Lights Publishing. This book was released on 2012-03 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci Code in an old Egyptian synagogue--the amazing story of one of the most important discoveries in modern religious scholarship. In 1896, Rabbi Solomon Schechter of Cambridge University stepped into the attic of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt, and there found the largest treasure trove of medieval and early manuscripts ever discovered. He had entered the synagogue's genizah--its repository for damaged and destroyed Jewish texts--which held nearly 300,000 individual documents, many of which were over 1,000 years old. Considered among the most important discoveries in modern religious history, its contents contained early copies of some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, early manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, and other sacred literature. The importance of the genizah's contents rivals that of the Rosetta Stone, and by virtue of its sheer mass alone, it will continue to command our attention indefinitely. This is the first accessible, comprehensive account of this astounding discovery. It will delight you with its fascinating adventure story--why this enormous collection was amassed, how it was discovered and the many lessons to be found in its contents. And it will show you how Schechter's find, though still being "unpacked" today, forever transformed our knowledge of the Jewish past, Muslim history and much more.
Download or read book The Precious Legacy written by Státní židovské muzeum (Czech Republic) and published by New York : Summit Books ; Washington [D.C.] : Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. This book was released on 1973 with total page 930 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The collection of the Czechoslovak State Jewish Museum in Prague is a unique respository of historic artifacts, artistic rarities, and cultural memories. These objects document the vitality and significance of Czech Jewry, which has flourished for a millennium at the crossroads of East and West and is the oldest continuous Jewish community in Europe. One hundred fifty-three local Jewish communities in Bohemia and Moravia were devastated during the Holocaust, and thus the Prague Museum bears eloquent testimony to a world virtually snuffed out just one generation ago. This book brings to American audiences their first glimpse of this extraordinary collection of Judaica in conjunction with an exhibition that is touring our nation's major museums under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. The unparalleled size and scope of the Prague collection-- some 140,000 treasures in all-- derive from an ironic twist of fate. From 1942 to 1945, the Nazis confiscated Jewish possessions of artistic and historical value throughout Bohemia and Moravia, and while the Jews of these lands were deported to captivity and death, these artifacts were shipped to Prague. There the Nazis intended to establish a "museum to an extinct race," a pathological "research" and propaganda "institute" that would justify to the world the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." While nearly all of European Jewry vanished during the Holocaust, Prague was spared from wartime destruction, as was the collection of Judaica that by war's end filled eight historic Jewish sites and more than fifty warehouses throughout the city. Teams of distinguished scholars from the United States and Czechoslovakia participated in the research and writing of this text, which includes studies of the historic and religious legacy of Czech Jewry as well as a catalogue of the landmark exhibition "The Precious Legacy." The volume is magnificently designed, depicting beautiful textiles, oil paintings, glassware, porcelain, precious metals, printed books and illuminated manuscripts in 75 full-color and 150 black-and-white illustrations. These photographs and essays together bear witness to the continuity and beauty of Jewish culture, a tradition that sanctifies life and transcends tragedy and death" --Back cover.
Download or read book The Book Smugglers written by David E. Fishman and published by Brandeis University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book Smugglers is the nearly unbelievable story of ghetto residents who rescued thousands of rare books and manuscripts—first from the Nazis and then from the Soviets—by hiding them on their bodies, burying them in bunkers, and smuggling them across borders. It is a tale of heroism and resistance, of friendship and romance, and of unwavering devotion—including the readiness to risk one’s life—to literature and art. And it is entirely true. Based on Jewish, German, and Soviet documents, including diaries, letters, memoirs, and the author’s interviews with several of the story’s participants, The Book Smugglers chronicles the daring activities of a group of poets turned partisans and scholars turned smugglers in Vilna, “The Jerusalem of Lithuania.” The rescuers were pitted against Johannes Pohl, a Nazi “expert” on the Jews, who had been dispatched to Vilna by the Nazi looting agency, Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, to organize the seizure of the city’s great collections of Jewish books. Pohl and his Einsatzstab staff planned to ship the most valuable materials to Germany and incinerate the rest. The Germans used forty ghetto inmates as slave-laborers to sort, select, pack, and transport the materials, either to Germany or to nearby paper mills. This group, nicknamed “the Paper Brigade,” and informally led by poet Shmerke Kaczerginski, a garrulous, street-smart adventurer and master of deception, smuggled thousands of books and manuscripts past German guards. If caught, the men would have faced death by firing squad at Ponar, the mass-murder site outside of Vilna. To store the rescued manuscripts, poet Abraham Sutzkever helped build an underground book-bunker sixty feet beneath the Vilna ghetto. Kaczerginski smuggled weapons as well, using the group’s worksite, the former building of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, to purchase arms for the ghetto’s secret partisan organization. All the while, both men wrote poetry that was recited and sung by the fast-dwindling population of ghetto inhabitants. With the Soviet “liberation” of Vilna (now known as Vilnius), the Paper Brigade thought themselves and their precious cultural treasures saved—only to learn that their new masters were no more welcoming toward Jewish culture than the old, and the books must now be smuggled out of the USSR. Thoroughly researched by the foremost scholar of the Vilna Ghetto—a writer of exceptional daring, style, and reach—The Book Smugglers is an epic story of human heroism, a little-known tale from the blackest days of the war.
Download or read book Hidden Treasures written by Joseph Shulam and published by Messianic Jewish Publisher. This book was released on 2008 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sacred Trash written by Adina Hoffman and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2016-06-21 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST WINNER OF THE 2012 AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION’S SOPHIE BRODY AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN JEWISH LITERATURE Sacred Trash tells the remarkable story of the Cairo Geniza—a synagogue repository for worn-out texts that turned out to contain the most vital cache of Jewish manuscripts ever discovered. This tale of buried communal treasure weaves together unforgettable portraits of Solomon Schechter and the other modern heroes responsible for the collection’s rescue with explorations of the medieval documents themselves—letters and poems, wills and marriage contracts, Bibles, money orders, fiery dissenting religious tracts, fashion-conscious trousseaux lists, prescriptions, petitions, and mysterious magical charms. Presenting a panoramic view of almost a thousand years of vibrant Mediterranean Judaism, Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole bring contemporary readers into the heart of this little-known trove, whose contents have rightly been dubbed “the Living Sea Scrolls.” Part biography, part meditation on the supreme value the Jewish people has long placed in the written word, Sacred Trash is above all a gripping tale of adventure and redemption. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)
Download or read book A Mortuary of Books written by Elisabeth Gallas and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2020 JDC-Herbert Katzki Award for Writing Based on Archival Material, given by the Jewish Book Council The astonishing story of the efforts of scholars and activists to rescue Jewish cultural treasures after the Holocaust In March 1946 the American Military Government for Germany established the Offenbach Archival Depot near Frankfurt to store, identify, and restore the huge quantities of Nazi-looted books, archival material, and ritual objects that Army members had found hidden in German caches. These items bore testimony to the cultural genocide that accompanied the Nazis’ systematic acts of mass murder. The depot built a short-lived lieu de memoire—a “mortuary of books,” as the later renowned historian Lucy Dawidowicz called it—with over three million books of Jewish origin coming from nineteen different European countries awaiting restitution. A Mortuary of Books tells the miraculous story of the many Jewish organizations and individuals who, after the war, sought to recover this looted cultural property and return the millions of treasured objects to their rightful owners. Some of the most outstanding Jewish intellectuals of the twentieth century, including Dawidowicz, Hannah Arendt, Salo W. Baron, and Gershom Scholem, were involved in this herculean effort. This led to the creation of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Inc., an international body that acted as the Jewish trustee for heirless property in the American Zone and transferred hundreds of thousands of objects from the Depot to the new centers of Jewish life after the Holocaust. The commitment of these individuals to the restitution of cultural property revealed the importance of cultural objects as symbols of the enduring legacy of those who could not be saved. It also fostered Jewish culture and scholarly life in the postwar world.
Download or read book The Greatest Treasure Hunt in History The Story of the Monuments Men Scholastic Focus written by Robert M. Edsel and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert M. Edsel brings the story of his #1 NYT bestseller for adults The Monuments Men to young readers for the first time in this dynamic, narrative nonfiction project packed with photos. Robert M. Edsel, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Monuments Men, brings this story to young readers for the first time in a sweeping, dynamic adventure detailing history's greatest treasure hunt.As the most destructive war in history ravaged Europe, many of the world's most cherished cultural objects were in harm's way. The Greatest Treasure Hunt in History recounts the astonishing true story of 11 men and one woman who risked their lives amidst the bloodshed of World War II to preserve churches, libraries, monuments, and works of art that for centuries defined the heritage of Western civilization. As the war raged, these American and British volunteers -- museum curators, art scholars and educators, architects, archivists, and artists, known as the Monuments Men -- found themselves in a desperate race against time to locate and save the many priceless treasures and works of art stolen by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
Download or read book Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean written by Edward Kritzler and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2009-11-03 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this lively debut work of history, Edward Kritzler tells the tale of an unlikely group of swashbuckling Jews who ransacked the high seas in the aftermath of the Spanish Inquisition. At the end of the fifteenth century, many Jews had to flee Spain and Portugal. The most adventurous among them took to the seas as freewheeling outlaws. In ships bearing names such as the Prophet Samuel, Queen Esther, and Shield of Abraham, they attacked and plundered the Spanish fleet while forming alliances with other European powers to ensure the safety of Jews living in hiding. Filled with high-sea adventures–including encounters with Captain Morgan and other legendary pirates–Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean reveals a hidden chapter in Jewish history as well as the cruelty, terror, and greed that flourished during the Age of Discovery.
Download or read book The Orpheus Clock written by Simon Goodman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The passionate, true story of one man's quest to reclaim what the Nazis stole from his family--their beloved art collection--and to restore their legacy. Simon Goodman's grandparents came from German Jewish banking dynasties and perished in concentration camps. And that's almost all he knew--his father rarely spoke of their family history or heritage. But when he passed away, and Simon received his father's papers, a story began to emerge. The Gutmanns, as they were known then, rose from a small Bohemian hamlet to become one of Germany's most powerful banking families. They also amassed a world-class art collection that included works by Degas, Renoir, Botticelli, and many others, including a Renaissance clock engraved with scenes from the legend of Orpheus. The Nazi regime snatched everything the Gutmanns had labored to build: their art, their wealth, their social standing, and their very lives. Simon grew up in London with little knowledge of his father's efforts to recover their family's possessions. It was only after his father's death that Simon began to piece together the clues about the stolen legacy and the Nazi looting machine. He learned much of the collection had gone to Hitler and Goring; other works had been smuggled through Switzerland, sold and resold, with many pieces now in famous museums. More still had been recovered by Allied forces only to be stolen again by bureaucrats-- European governments quietly absorbed thousands of works of art into their own collections. Through painstaking detective work across two continents, Simon proved that many pieces belonged to his family, and successfully secured their return-- the first Nazi looting case to be settled in the United States. Goodman's dramatic story reveals a rich family history almost obliterated by the Nazis. It is not only the account of a twenty-year long detective hunt for family treasure, but an unforgettable tale of redemption and restoration.
Download or read book The Colmar Treasure written by Barbara Drake Boehm and published by Rizzoli International Publications. This book was released on 2019-08-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published to accompany an exhibition at The Met Cloisters, this exquisite volume examines a treasure, hidden by a medieval Jewish family, which offers new insight into their world and their lost community. During a 19th century renovation of a confectioner's shop in the town of Colmar, France, workers chanced upon a precious hoard of medieval jewellery and coins hidden in a wall. The cache - known as the Colmar Treasure - is thought to have been concealed by a Jewish family prior to the outbreak of the Plague in 1348, when Jews across the region were tragically scapegoated and put to violent death. This exquisite volume, published to accompany an exhibition at The Met Cloisters, examines their legacy through the lens of the Colmar treasure, shedding light on what it reveals about the work, homes, worship and values of its owners. Accompanies an exhibition at The Met Cloisters from 22 July 2019 to 12 January 2020. Contents: Director's Foreword Acknowledgments Finding Treasure in Colmar Finding the Lost Jews of Colmar Unlocking a Medieval Jewel Box Catalogue Notes Bibliography Index
Download or read book Contested Treasure written by Thomas W. Barton and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2014-12-19 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Contested Treasure, Thomas Barton examines how the Jews in the Crown of Aragon in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries negotiated the overlapping jurisdictions and power relations of local lords and the crown. The thirteenth century was a formative period for the growth of royal bureaucracy and the development of the crown’s legal claims regarding the Jews. While many Jews were under direct royal authority, significant numbers of Jews also lived under nonroyal and seigniorial jurisdiction. Barton argues that royal authority over the Jews (as well as Muslims) was far more modest and contingent on local factors than is usually recognized. Diverse case studies reveal that the monarchy’s Jewish policy emerged slowly, faced considerable resistance, and witnessed limited application within numerous localities under nonroyal control, thus allowing for more highly differentiated local modes of Jewish administration and coexistence. Contested Treasure refines and complicates our portrait of interfaith relations and the limits of royal authority in medieval Spain, and it presents a new approach to the study of ethnoreligious relations and administrative history in medieval European society.
Download or read book Defending National Treasures written by Elizabeth Karlsgodt and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-07 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defending National Treasures explores the fate of art and cultural heritage during the Nazi occupation of France. The French cultural patrimony was a crucial locus of power struggles between German and French leaders and among influential figures in each country. Karlsgodt examines the preservation policy that the Vichy regime enacted in an assertion of sovereignty over French art museums, historic monuments, and archeological sites. The limits to this sovereignty are apparent from German appropriations of public statues, Jewish-owned art collections, and key "Germanic" works of art from French museums. A final chapter traces the lasting impact of the French wartime reforms on preservation policy. In Defending National Treasures, Karlsgodt introduces the concept of patrimania to reveal examples of opportunism in art preservation. During the war, French officials sought to acquire coveted artwork from Jewish collections for the Louvre and other museums; in the early postwar years, they established a complicated guardianship over unclaimed art recovered from Germany. A cautionary tale for our own times, Defending National Treasures examines the ethical dimensions of museum acquisitions in the ongoing noble quest to preserve great works of art.
