Born in Belarussia, and later a resident of St. Petersburg, Odessa, Kovno and Riga, Simon Dubnow (1860-1941) published his first essay about the Jews of Russia in 1880, and understood at a relatively early age that the subject would always be of particular significance for him. He wrote in his diary in 1892, “My life’s…
Tag: history
‘Jewish Victorian’ a fascinating window into British past
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It is not commonly known that 14 large asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter were discovered by Herman Goldschmidt, a French-Jewish astronomer and artist, over a remarkable decade of scientific achievement beginning in 1852. Since only 20 asteroids had been known to science before Goldschmidt’s heavenly investigations, which he began with only…
Jews In Places You Never Thought Of
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Recently published in hardcover, Jews In Places You Never Thought Of (Ktav), edited by Karen Primack, reminds us that the Jewish family tree includes many diverse and exotic branches. Ever heard of the Chuetas of Majorca and other islands off the Mediterranean coast of Spain? Outwardly Catholic, they are considered descendants of hidden Jews who…
‘Unbroken Chain’ links diverse rabbis, celebrities
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Dr. Neil Rosenstein of New Jersey has been researching his roots ever since his childhood in South Africa. Born in Cape Town in 1944, he studied medicine there and interned in Israel, but despite the rigours of medical school he never abandoned his family tree research for long. A surgeon, he jokingly describes his medical…
H. Halpern Esq. continues long family tradition
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“The name Halpern has been over the doors of men’s wear stores in this city for more than 75 years,” says Meredith Halpern, manager of H. Halpern Esq., an upscale boutique for gentlemen in the lobby of the InterContinental Hotel on Toronto’s Front Street W. Generations of Torontonians bought their bar-mitzvah suits at the original…
German ‘fairy tale roads’ . . . and a medieval synagogue
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Rising from a knoll deep in a Hessian forest, Schloss Sababurg is ringed by a distinctive old hedge of brambles, through which the Grimm Brothers were forced, nearly two centuries ago, to cut a path in order to reach the castle, which was then a noble ruin. (The castle dates from the 14th, the brambles…
A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico
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It has been only about two decades since tales began surfacing in the popular press of Hispanic-Catholic families in the American Southwest who lit candles in secret on Friday evenings and retained other long-held family customs bearing unmistakeable resemblance to Jewish rites. Some families abstained from work or travel on Saturday, circumcised newborn boys, drained…
The Jewish ‘New Muslims’ of Meshhed, Iran
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In 1839 an unfounded rumor spread among the Shi’ite Muslims of the town of Meshed in northeastern Iran that a Jewish woman had committed an act of disrespect towards Islam. According to a period account preserved in the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem, an angry mob “attacked the Jewish quarter, broke into the Jewish houses,…
Markman’s Jewish Remnants in Spain
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In the town of Trujillo, Spain, home of Francisco Pizarro and other conquistadors, there is a row of shops off the main square of special interest to Jewish travelers. When I was there about ten years ago, a pharmacist pointed to a door in his shop and invited me downstairs; there, I found an archway…
Hundert’s study of 18th-century Opatow, Poland
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Professor Gershon Hundert, the distinguished historian and chair of the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University, beguiled an audience of Jewish genealogists last summer in New York with midrash-like tales of early Jewish history in Poland. For centuries, the Jews felt very comfortable in Poland, Hundert said, referring to stories that even the name…
