The Jewish calendar is lunisolar. The years are counted according to the Earth’s rotation around the Sun, while the Moon's motions are taken into account when determining the months.

On 10 September 2018 (according to the Jewish calendar, on the 1st of Tishrei), the 5779th Jewish year began. This is a conventional calculation based on biblical history. Its starting point is the creation of the world and, more specifically, the day on which Adam and Eve were created. The Bible does not give any dates, but often there is information on how long a given person lived or how old they were when they became a parent. This provided the basis for the estimated calculations of the years.

An interesting fact is that the month of Tishrei, in which the Rosh Hashanah festival is celebrated (literally meaning the "head of the year"), is not the first month in the Jewish calendar at all. Months are not named in the Torah (their names appear later), but they are numbered and the spring month of Nisan is described as the first, while Tishrei is the seventh month.

In the Jewish calendar, months are measured according to the cycles of the Moon and last 29 or 30 days. The birth of a new moon (Rosh Chodesh – literally the "head of the month") has the status of a half-holiday and is accompanied by additional prayers. The full moon always falls on the middle of the month.

The image is a copy of a picture by Maurycy Gottlieb (1856—1879), made by his younger brother Marcin Gottlieb (1867—1936) eight years after the artist’s death. The original was created in Munich in 1876, as a school work painted under the supervision of Professor Carl Piloty, who had suggested the subject to the artist.

The group portrait of the Galician Jews belongs to the late works by Piotr Michałowski (1800—1855). It was created in a time when the artist — treating painting as a hobby — managed the estate in Bolestraszyce near Przemyśl. This painting, being actually an oil study, is similar in character to the 17^th-century Dutch portraits. From the dark, abstract space busts of five Jews emerge.

The Talmud is the most important compilation of the oral Torah,  that was revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai. It is a commentary, an explanation, and a discussion. Before the Talmud, there was the Mishnah, to which Talmud is an extension.
There are two Talmuds—the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud—whose 1831 edition is presented in our collection. The process of editing the former was completed in the 4th century AD in Palestine, in the academies of Caesarea, Sepphoris, and Tiberias. The latter was completed a little later, at the beginning of the 6th century AD in Babylonia, in the academies of Sura, Nehardea, and Pumbedita. It is far more extensive than the Jerusalem Talmud.

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.

The cover in the form of an elongated rectangle was hand-sewn of a fabric with a tiny geometrical and floral design. On the obverse, in the cartouche, taking on the form of a laurel wreath, there is an embroidered donative inscription which reads:

זנ | אשה צנועה | מרת הינדא ז”ל |
בת הרב המ הג’ | מ’ שמואל כץ שנ’ | תעג לפק

This unusual Hanukkah lamp was set on a wooden base, in the middle of which there is a small wall made of two planks, reinforced with another plank and a metal plaque on the back. To the front of the wall, a cast-iron chandelier is fixed.

The Hanukkah lamp is lit during the Chanukah celebrated to commemorate the victory of Judah Maccabee over the Seleucids in 164 B.C. 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 ring was purchased for the museum collection in 1998 in one of the antique shops in Sącz. According to the owner of the shop, the ring was found among other objects hidden in one of the houses in Nowy Sącz during the war. The exhibit has a great historical value, as only a few similar objects could be found in Polish museum collections.

On the eastern wall of the former Town Hall in Kazimierz shown in the photo by Jan Motyka, there is a plaque commemorating the arrival of Jews in Poland. Originally the plaque was placed...