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Morbid Curiosities
A tour through a collection of Jewish funerary objects
When Tablet Magazine recently visited Isaac Pollak’s Manhattan apartment to look at his collection of Jewish funerary objects, the collector was in an unusually good position to talk about them. A longstanding member of his synagogue’s burial society, or chevra kadisha, he had been involved in the ritual purification of a body just hours before. Over the last three decades, Pollak, 59, has taken part in more than 300 such purifications, known as taharot, and has also amassed one of the world’s most formidable collections of objects relating to the process. In the slide show below, he shows us some of his pieces and offers insights into the soothing, if sometimes mysterious, world of Jewish burial rites.
When General Grant Expelled the Jews
The End of the Jewish Left
Political theorist Michael Walzer and others argue about the death of the century-long Jewish-Leftist alliance
Voices Raised for Jerusalem
The Zamir Chorale brings its Jewish choral music to Jazz at Lincoln Center in celebration of Yom Yerushalayim
Old Jews Telling More Jokes
The web series ‘Old Jews Telling Jokes’ goes off-Broadway, with shtick, songs, and a script by writer Daniel Okrent
The Most Perfect Hebrew Bible
The medieval Aleppo Codex was safeguarded for centuries in Syria. The problems started when it arrived in Israel.
