Celebrating the Jewish wedding in a display of pieces from Yeshiva University Museum’s permanent collection that span four hundred years. On view are accessories for bride and groom, wedding rings, ketubbot and paintings. From a 16th century German wedding ring to an 18th century ketubbah from Verona to a 20th century painting by Abraham Ratner, […]

Maintaining Yiddishkeit In Colonial Times It was not easy to maintain tradition and religious observance in the sparsely settled American colonies. These colonies were, of course, far away from the old European centers of Jewish life and learning. Furthermore, there were very few Jews residing in America during the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1695, […]

Two Founding American Jewish Fathers “The twenty-three Jews who sailed into New Amsterdam harbor on a September day in 1654 were to found the first Jewish community in what is today the United States. They were not the first of their folk in that town; at least one man had come there from Holland earlier […]

Jews Settle In New York In 1654 the Portuguese recaptured the city of Recife, Brazil from the Dutch. This marked the end of the vibrant Jewish community that had flourished under the Dutch beginning in 1630. Those residents of Recife who were originally Marranos (Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity) fled for […]

Recife – The First Jewish Community In The New World Many people know that on September 7, 1654, twenty-three Jews arrived in New Amsterdam (renamed New York after the Dutch left). Most are not, however, aware of the fact that these Jews came to America from Recife, Brazil. Recife, now the capital of the state […]

The First Jew To Live In North America The year 2004 marked the 350th anniversary of Jewish settlement in America. In 1654 the first Jews arrived from Brazil to take up permanent residence in New Amsterdam (New York). When the Portuguese re-conquered Pernambuco, a portion of northern Brazil, from the Dutch, the Jews residing there […]

A monumental structure, probably dating back to the tenth century BCE, was discovered in excavations in the City of David, headed by Dr. Elat Mazar, under the auspices of the Institute of Achaeology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and conducted in conjunction with the Ir David Foundation – which is engaged in the development […]

What is the history of Gaza? Who holds claim to Gaza? Gaza, or in Hebrew, Azza, is a city on the southern coastal plain of Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel, today Medinat Yisrael, or the modern nation State of Israel). In Biblical times, G-d gave this Holy Land as a gift, as an eternal […]

Fact: In October 1946, Kfar Darom (in the Gaza Strip) and ten other Jewish communities were established, in order to avert the British plan of disengaging the Negev from the Jewish State. Fact: Kfar Darom was established on the site of the 3rd-4th century Talmudic Jewish town of Kfar Darom. The Jewish farmer, Tuvia Miller, […]

They are not the Jews of bagels and lox brunches with the Sunday New York Times. They do not necessarily get the humor of a Woody Allen movie and are as likely to salivate over a dinner of fried chicken, collard greens, sweet potato pie and iced tea as they are to crave a repast […]