Moshe David Gaon realized that the contributions of Sephardic Jews had been overlooked by historians, well before it dawned on others. He dedicated his professional life to making things right. His personal archive, a collection of critical significance to Jewish history and culture, is preserved today at the National Library of Israel
When Samuel Ha-Levi illegally built a synagogue in the provincial Spanish town of Toledo, no one could have known that it would one day become a church, then a military barracks in the Napoleonic war, a national monument, and finally a museum… but that’s just the beginning!
Moroccan Jews (and the Jews of Western Algeria in the areas adjacent to Morocco) to this day begin the Passover Seder with a short text in Judeo-Arabic at the center of which is the figure of Moses…
Some of us find it hard to believe that in Talmudic times women and men prayed together in the synagogue. When did a separate gallery for women become mandatory in Orthodox synagogues, and how did the separation of men and women in the prayer service come about?
A look at some of the brave souls who risked their lives to reach Israel before and just after the state’s founding…
Habiba Msika reveled in the pleasures of free love in 1920s Tunis. A rejected paramour ultimately took her life
A recently discovered manuscript documents the first 130 years of the Portuguese Inquisition’s tribunals, mainly in Lisbon. Recorded on the pages are trials conducted by inquisitors and others against newly converted Christians accused of continuing to practice Judaism in secret…
Check out these clips featuring four of the most stunning and interesting Torah scrolls from the National Library of Israel collection
Join us for a Hanukkah video journey across cultures and time, featuring treasures from the National Library of Israel!
From the surrender of Spain to the court of Suleiman the Magnificent and beyond, they were there
