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double trouble

Kestenbaum and Company

A stereoscope card featuring photographs of the actor Adah Isaacs Menken (1835-68), an American actress known best for her performance in the melodrama Mazeppa based on the life of the Ukrainian legend Ivan Mazepa (1639–1709). The story goes that as a young man, he was caught in flagrante with a noblewoman, whose husband punished him by tying him naked to a wild horse. When the horse reached the Cossacks, Mazeppa became their military leader. The story underwent many adaptations, including one by the English poet Lord Byron and, in the United States, a melodramatic burlesque in which Menken played a female Mazeppa. Menken was the first American Jewish performer to cultivate an outrageous stage personality.

A Feminist Avant La Lettre

Yalta

The Talmud reports that Yalta (the second most mentioned woman in the Talmud after the daughter of Rav Chisda) was a “bright spark,” educated by her father, and had “vast medical knowledge.” A story in Tractate Chulin describes a ruling she made for herself after challenging rabbis on an affair having to do with menstruation. As the scholar Mia Amram explains, Yalta’s record of “adjudicating for women’s issues, contradicting the highest regarded rabbis, and rewriting ancient laws to finally include women in Jewish practices” might maker her the first Jewish feminist.

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Gatecrashers

Ep. 3: Dartmouth and the Jews Who Loved It

How a laid-back college in the mountains became an unlikely oasis for midcentury Jews

September 20, 2022

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Those who do not remember the past are ... probably not Jewish

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The seminal role that Felix Frankfurter enjoys in American Jewish history is riddled with irony: he shed his yarmulke long before donning his judicial robes.

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sassoon splendour

Known as the Rothschilds of the East, the Sassoon family made its money in the cotton trade in Iraq and the opium trade in its more recent home in the United Kingdom. But they branched out. Rachel Sassoon-Beer was the editor-in-chief of The Observer and The Sunday Times and David Solomon Sassoon was an avid collector of Judaica. The Sassoon Codex will be auctioned off at Sotheby’s this month for a projected price of no less than 30 million. A new exhibit, “Through the Saga of the Sassoon Family,” is now on at the Jewish Museum.

Portrait of Rachel Sassoon-Beer (1858-1927)
Portrait of Rachel Sassoon-Beer (1858-1927)
National Portrait Gallery
Portrait of David Sassoon by artist William Melville
Portrait of David Sassoon by artist William Melville
jewish museum
Codex Sassoon
Codex Sassoon
sotheby’s
wikimedia
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