It is impossible to understand the customs, not only the religious ones, in Jewish culture, without turning back to the earliest history of the Jewish nation and ancient Israel. Many of those customs symbolically refer to the rituals performed in the Temple of Jerusalem; however, they follow them to a far more modest extent.

According to a Jewish tradition, married women, but also divorcees and widows, should, as a sign of modesty (cnius), cover their hair in public places. This prescription is imposed in various forms. In orthodox environments, women still shave their heads and cover them with headscarves, called tichel, although according to Halakha (religious law) it is not necessary.

How thee Torah scroll is made?

A special celebration has been held for several years on one December evening in Szeroka Street, located in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter of Kraków.
After the speeches of the invited guests (usually including the Mayor of Kraków, representatives of cultural institutions, and rabbis), a lamp is lit on a large eight-branch candelabrum called the Hanukkah Menorah. There is joyful atmosphere, the participants sing and dance, and then everyone is offered a donut...

The Hanukkah lamp is lit during the Hanukkah celebrated to commemorate the victory of Judah Maccabee over the Seleucids in 164 BC as well as the ritual purification of the profaned Temple of Jerusalem and its reconsecration during the eight-day celebration. The new furnishing for the Temple was made...

The czuha played a special role in the outfit of the Lemkos: it symbolised wealth and prestige. The czuha was obligatorily worn to Orthodox church, on more important festivals — even in the summer, as well as for weddings (even if one had to borrow it). It was a kind of a voluminous coat made of brown domestic cloth, which for other Lemkos was indicative of its owner’s origin.

Marcin Marciniak and Jan Sapiński did not suppose that the morning of 3 May 1909 would bring anything special and change their lives in any way whatsoever. While our working in a field, after the plough hit something, one of them found a hard object. The vessel, enveloped in clay, turned out to be one of the most valuable preserved monuments of the artistic craft of pre-Romanesque art, associated with the beginning of Christianity on Polish soil...

For Japan, the Edo epoch (1600–1868), under shogunate rule, was a time of isolation from all external influences, but also a time of prosperity and peace, solidified by the established social order (in a highly hierarchical society, everyone played a specific role – samurais constituted the most privileged class of the bakufu).

The motif of decorating Jewish wedding rings with a model of a building appeared as early as the Middle Ages. The top represented either a house to be shared by a young married couple, or – as in the case of the ring presented on our website – a symbolic depiction of the Holy Temple of Jerusalem. The destruction of the Holy Temple is a recurring motif throughout the entire wedding ceremony.

The evolution of iconography, from the instilling of an idea, its crystallisation in worship, to its materialisation in art is a long and complicated process. The example of the Protection of the Mother of God shows how creativity could develop a theme based on one idea; the idea in which the East and the West found a common source, and through the interpretation of which their paths diverged with time.