Jan Pogorzelski, Hanukkah Converter Lamp, 1893, Silver, 26¾” x 18” x 8¼”, Jewish Museum, New York, Photo courtesy of the Jewish Museum
The converter lamp became popular in Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland in the middle of the 19th century. These upper portions of menorah lamps could be inserted into candlesticks that people already owned. The firm of Jan Pogorzelski in Warsaw … Continue reading
Shiviti Amulet; Taddana, Morocco; 19th Century, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Berkley, CA, Photo via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License
A shiviti is a representation of a candlestick that is used for the meditation of God’s name in the Jewish religion. A shiviti displays the name of God above the Temple seven-branch candelabrum. Shiviti is the first word in the Hebrew … Continue reading
Menorahs and Ark of the Covenant, Jewish Catacomb in the Villa Torlonia, Rome, 3rd century C.E., Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
In the Late Antique period, when the Roman emperors were still in power and the official religion included the cult of the emperor and the pantheon of Roman gods, several religions were practiced in secret, among which were Judaism and … Continue reading