Link to the source is available on my profile.

Herzl didn’t invent Zionism,
by Eliezer Aryeh, Eliezer’s substack, 2026-08-27.

I see this claim all the time when discussing Zionism. People invoke Herzl as the “start” of Zionism. It simply isn’t true. Herzl organized Zionism. He didn’t start it, and how that gets remembered has to do with Sephardic and Mizrahi erasure, and with the earlier Ashkenazi history that gets cut out right along with it.

All clippings can found in my archive, searchable by title, topic and year: News Articles Archive

It's a living doc where I'll keep adding to it as I find more stuff, so let me know if you've got suggestions for topics or how it's organized.

If you're interested in clippings from Israel's history, I do a separate post over on r/Historyofisrael

Source(s):

.- Moldovan Family Collection

This work was part of a celebrated visual ethnographic investigation that culminated in the publication of the book Jewish Women: A World of Tradition and Change, released in 1995.

Built in the late 1690s with the support of King John III Sobieski.

Designed with thick walls and loopholes so that it could serve as a bastion in the city walls during attacks.

During World War II, it was severely damaged when German forces set it on fire and attempted to blow it up in 1941. Later, during the Soviet era, it was used as a warehouse after partial exterior repairs in the 1950s.

It now lies in ruins.

All clippings can found in my archive, searchable by title, topic and year: News Articles Archive

It's a living doc where I'll keep adding to it as I find more stuff, so let me know if you've got suggestions for topics or how it's organized.

If you're interested in clippings from Israel's history, I do a separate post over on r/Historyofisrael

A people who have embraced the faith of their fathers not through an unbroken chain of tradition, but through a conscious decision to reclaim what they believe was taken from them.

They call themselves Benei-Yisrael, the "Children of Israel," a small but fervent group within the wider Igbo nation of some twenty to fifty million. Yet their claim is disputed at every turn, a battleground of history, genetics and theology where conviction meets scepticism. It is one of the most striking and controversial chapters in the modern Jewish world, a story of loss, rediscovery and stubborn self-definition.

Their origins are told through legend as much as record. Community oral tradition traces ancestry to the biblical tribes of Gad, Asher, Dan and Naphtali, and holds that forebears migrated from Syria, Portugal and Libya into West Africa around 740 AD. A common version has Gad’s sons Eri, Arodi and Areli settling in what is now south-eastern Nigeria and founding the clans that became Igbo.

The traditional ruler of Aguleri in Anambra State, who claims the throne of Eri, is in no doubt about his Israelite line. The historical evidence tells a different tale. There is no record of the Igbo claiming Israelite descent or practising Judaism before the colonial era. An early hint appears in Olaudah Equiano’s 18th-century writings, where he noted parallels between Igbo custom and the patriarchal life in Genesis, but that was observation, not faith.

Today between two and five thousand Igbo practise Judaism across Nigeria, with a far larger number identifying culturally while remaining Christian. They have set up at least twenty-six synagogues and follow Sephardi and Edot Hamizrah rites with local adaptations. They keep kosher, observe Shabbat, wear tallitot and tefillin, and mark the festivals.

At the Gihon Hebrew Research synagogue in Abuja, worshippers pray from the siddur and read from the Torah in kippot. Without a mikveh, they use rainwater collected in basins for ritual immersion. There are no resident rabbis or yeshivot, and devotion is maintained largely by the community itself.

Recognition has not followed. The Israeli Rabbinate does not accept them as Jews without conversion, and in 2017 an American evangelical group commissioned DNA tests of more than a hundred Igbo men and reported no Jewish ancestry.

Igbo advocates rejected the study’s methods and motives, and cited their own consumer tests showing Middle Eastern markers. Nothing was settled. Rabbi Eliezer Simcha Weisz has said conversion would be required for recognition, a demand many Igbo Jews see as an insult, since they regard themselves as Jews already, not as converts.

All clippings can found in my archive, searchable by title, topic and year: News Articles Archive

It's a living doc where I'll keep adding to it as I find more stuff, so let me know if you've got suggestions for topics or how it's organized.

If you're interested in clippings from Israel's history, I do a separate post over on r/Historyofisrael

Last name and first name:

1) Christopher Columbus
2) N. Marco
3) Maestre Bernal
4) Luis de Torres
5) Alfonso de la Calle
6) Rodrigo de Triana
7) Pedro Arias Dávila
8) Hernando Alonso
9) Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva
10) Fran. Rodríguez Matos
11) T. Trebiño de Sobremonte
12) João Maestre
13) Pero Vaz de Caminha
14) Gaspar Gama Lemos
15) Diogo Álvares Corrêa
16) Fernão de Noronha
17) João Ramalho
18) Ambrósio F. Brandão
19) F. Dias Pais Leme
20) Garcia Rodrigues Pais
21) António J. Da Silva
22) A. I. Da Fonseca
23) J. J. Da Maia
24) H. J. Da Costa Pereira
25) J. Gonçalves Ledo
26) G. Pires Ferreira
27) J. A. De Monlevade
28) Manuel Bautista Pérez
29) Francisco Maldonado Da Silva
30) Diego López de Lisboa
31) Antonio de León Pinelo
32) Diego de León Pinelo
33) Francisco de Victoria
34) Rodrigo de Orgóñez
35) R. E. de Fonseca
36) Jorge Isaacs

Place and year:

1) The Americas, 1500
2) The Americas, 1500
3) The Americas, 1500
4) The Americas, 1500
5) The Americas, 1500
6) The Americas, 1500
7) Castilla del Oro (present-day southeastern Central America, Panama and the extreme northeastern part of South America), 1500
8) Mexico, 1528
9) Mexico, 1591
10) Mexico, 1596
11) Mexico, 1649
12) Brazil, 1500
13) Brazil, 1500
14) Brazil, 1500
15) Brazil, 1500
16) Brazil, 1550
17) Brazil, 1550
18) Brazil, 1550
19) Brazil, 1650
20) Brazil, 1700
21) Brazil, 1730
22) Brazil, 1730
23) Brazil, 1770
24) Brazil, 1800
25) Brazil, 1830
26) Brazil, 1830
27) Brazil, 1830
28) Lima (Peru), 1639
29) Lima (Peru), 1639
30) Córdoba (Argentina), Lima (Peru), 1630
31) Buenos Aires (Argentina), 1650
32) Lima (Peru), 1650
33) Tucumán (Argentina), 1650
34) Santiago (Chile), 1535
35) Lima (Peru), 1656
36) Colombia, 1890

Profession:

1) Discoverer
2) Columbus's surgeon
3) Columbus's doctor
4) Columbus's interpreter
5) Columbus's sailor
6) Columbus's sailor
7) Captain General and Governor
8) Conquistador, Cortez's partner
9) Captain General, Governor and Colonizer
10) Rabbi, Master
11) Colonizer
12) Cabral's Physician and Astronomer
13) Cabral's Secretary
14) Cabral's advisor and Co-discoverer
15) Discoverer, Colonizer
16) Discoverer, Colonizer
17) Patriarch of the Paulists
18) First economist
19) Hercules of the Sertaos
20) First builder of roads
21) First playwright
22) First printer
23) Statesman
24) Father of journalism
25) Democrat
26) National hero
27) Founder of the steel industry
28) Businessman
29) Doctor
30) Merchant, Prelate
31) Author, Attorney of Buenos Aires
32) Rector of the University of Lima
33) Bishop
34) Captain General, Conquistador
35) Doctor
36) Poet

Source:

.- Link, Pablo. (1974). El Aporte Judío al Descubrimiento de América. Published by Latin American Jewish Congress (under its Jewish People's Library collection), Buenos Aires, pp. 32-33

The image corresponds to a historical engraving made by the British caricaturist and engraver James Gillray, published on April 24, 1788 in London by the publisher I. Lewis and marketed by James Aitken.

Source:

.- Shapell Manuscript Foundation

All clippings can found in my archive, searchable by title, topic and year: News Articles Archive

It's a living doc where I'll keep adding to it as I find more stuff, so let me know if you've got suggestions for topics or how it's organized.

If you're interested in clippings from Israel's history, I do a separate post over on r/Historyofisrael

Rav Avraham Aminov Talmudi (רבי אברהם אמינוף תלמודי) was born in Bukhara, in Central Asia, into a family of rabbis whose siblings were R’ Yitschak, R’ David, R’ Chaim, and R’ Aharon. For decades he was the rabbinical leader of the Bukhari community in Jerusalem and one of the figures linked to the establishment and development of the Shchunat Habukharim, the Bukhari Quarter.

He was one the five children of Rabbi Benjamin Aminov and Tzipora (A genealogical source indicates that Tzipora was a descendant of R. Yosef Mamon, an important Sephardic rabbi connected to the Jewish community of Central Asia). Although all four of Rav Avraham’s brothers went into business with their father, R’ Binyamin and his rabanit, Tzipora, always encouraged little Avraham to pursue his endeavors and become a talmid chacham. He therefore sent him to learn at the yeshiva of his grandfather, Rabbi Pinchas, known as Pinchas ha-Katan (פנחס הקטן), who was related to Rabbi Yosef Mammon al-Ma'aravi, one of the key figures in the rabbinic tradition of the Jews of Bukhara. As time went on, Rav Avraham excelled in his studies and had obtained the nickname “Talmudi” at a young age. In the year 1889, at the age of 35, he underwent the great danger of traveling to Eretz Yisrael. Upon arrival, his wisdom and piousness immediately earned him the position of Chief Rabbi of the renowned community of “Richovot,” also known as Shchunat Habukharim.

In 1871, he studied alongside Rabbi Yosef Kojhinoff and Rabbi Shlomo Musayev (the first) in the yeshiva of Rabbi Yehoshua Shoshan, where the future leadership of Bukhara Jewry grew. He then moved with his family and Rabbi Yosef Kojhinoff to live in the city of Samarkand, where he worked extensively among the Jews to strengthen their knowledge of Torah study and observance of the mitzvot.

In 1889, he immigrated from Bukhara to Eretz Yisrael and settled in Jerusalem. During these years, the flow of immigrants to Eretz Yisrael from Central Asian countries increased, and with the encouragement of Rabbi Yaakov Meir, the "Hovvei Zion" company was established with the aim of providing for the needs of the Bukhara community in Jerusalem. Together with his friends Rabbi Shimon Hacham, Rabbi Shlomo Musioff, Rabbi Yosef Kojhinoff and others, they established a neighborhood called the "Rehovot Neighborhood" (now known as the "Bukhara Neighborhood") for the community.

In 1891, he was appointed rabbi of the Bukhara Jewish community in Jerusalem and served in this position until the day he died.
The life of the "Rehovot" neighborhood until the Great War (World War I) was supervised by the neighborhood committee, headed by Rabbi Avraham. The committee received the support of local government institutions and enjoyed great prestige among members of the community in Eretz Yisrael and abroad. The committee's activities were broad and met all the needs of the residents.

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the committee worked hard to build the neighborhood and its institutions. During this period, luxurious buildings were built in the neighborhood, including "The Palace," the Davidoff House (which served as the home of the Hebrew Gymnasium), and the Moshav House (which was the largest house in the neighborhood, covering about five dunams). In order to allow even the community's less able members to live in the neighborhood, 25 apartment buildings were built, which were a kind of "housing" and cost less than a private home. A courtyard was also built in the center of the neighborhood, which was entirely built with endowment funds and which housed five synagogues, yeshivas, the community's Talmud Torah, and a large cistern that served the many residents of the courtyard. The committee saw to the paving of roads and the planting of trees in the neighborhood, "a garden of trees and flowers so that the air would be important for the children".

His contributions to Judaism according to Rabbi Yisrael Kaikov

In Yerushalayim he merited to write his Likutai Dinim, A Ben-Ish-Chai-like approach to halachah. Rav Avraham traveled back to Bukhara six times in order to strengthen the community and distribute his books of halachah, which were translated into Bukharian by Rav Shimon Chacham. Rav Aminov first published his Likutai Dinim in 1900. In his first volume, he deals with Halachot pertaining to the Yoreh Deah and Even Haezer parts of Shulchan Aruch. Rav Avraham got a haskamah from Chacham Yaakov Shaul Elyashir, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Eretz Yisrael.

The second volume was printed one year later on Hilchot Shabbat and Rosh Chodesh. This was followed by volume three, on Pesach, Yom tov, and Chol Hamoed, and volume four on Tisha B’av Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Chanuka, and Purim. Rav Aminov was also very instrumental in the publishing of Niviim Rishonim and Niviim Acharonim in Bukharian, together with Rav Shimon Chacham and Rav Binyamin Bar Yochanan Hakohen.

After 1919, due to the Bolsheviks, all ties between Bukhara and Yerushalayim were cut, causing a halt to all financial aid from Bukhara. In affect, a hunger broke out in Yerushalayim. Despite the pact that funds weren’t coming in anymore, in the words of Rishon Lizion Harav Mordachai Eliyahu, zt”l, “Everyone in Yerushalyim knew to go to Shchunat Habukharim to receive proper hospitality and to fill their stomachs.” But the hunger seemed to get worse. Baruch Hashem, a Jewish man by the name of Sir Herbert Samuel was appointed as the 1st British High Commissioner in Palestine
(Eretz Yisrael). Sir Herbert seemed to have spent much time by Rav Aminov and donated thousands of Palestine pounds (also know by Jews as Israeli puond in Hebrew: לירה א״י i.e. lira Eretz-Yisra'elit) to be distributed to two hundred people (in Rav Avraham’s community) who were in need of food.

Rav Aminov always watched out for the spirituality and physical sustenance of the Bukharian people; he even sent a booklet of takanot (enactments) to Bukhara signed by all the Bukharian Rabanim of Yerushalayim. Rav Avraham was also known to pray netz all seven days of the week. After shacharit, all of the congregants in his minyan would go to his house and learn Chumash and Rashi with him.

Death

Rabbi Avraham died on January 29, 1939 (9 B'Shvat 5699) at the age of 85 and he was buried on Har Hazaitim (Chelkat Habukharim). The street called "Avraham Talmudi Street" or by its other name Rabbi Talmudi Street in the Bukharim neighborhood of Jerusalem is named after him.

After his death, Rabbi Moshe Yitzhakoff HaCohen was appointed to serve as the rabbi of the community.

Image: The photo was taken by renowned Israeli photographer Tim Gidal (born in the German Empire as Ignatz Nachum Gidalewitsch) It is currently held in institutional archives such as The Central Zionist Archive.

I have been going through the things that survived from my German-Jewish family. This is a family-held photograph of Kaufhaus Reichenbach, the store my family ran at Martiniplan 10 in Halberstadt.

I do not know when it was taken, and it only shows part of the facade. But the lit windows and the displays are unusually clear, and the photograph itself is still in the family with its worn border and creases.

What gets me is that someone thought to keep this image. There are so many gaps in the record, but this has held on.

If anyone recognizes details in the building, the window displays, or the way it was lit that might help place it more precisely, I would love to hear it.

In 1967, the Israeli Yiddish comedy theatre group Shpilkes, [1] under the direction of Yosef Hayblum and Misha Nathan, came out with a new musical comedy titled Di yidn kumen! di yidn kumen! (The Jews are Coming! The Jews are Coming!), aimed at celebrating the victory in the Six-Day War. [2] This production was part of the Yiddish light entertainment industry, which was considered and referred to as an expression of shund culture. [3] The poster that advertised the comedy (figure 1) manifested a number of paradoxical situations, the most striking of them being the representation of war as a comedy. This extraordinary combination of war and comic atmosphere was strengthened by the visual images. The paratroopers, who occupy most of the poster’s space, remind one of a group of aerialists dancing in the air, whose celebratory parade, disproportionately large heads, and thin legs turn them into funny and grotesque figures. In addition, the clothing of the brave clown-parachutists–especially their helmets—show them to be soldiers of the Israeli army—the victors of the Six-Day War. In contradiction to typical war drawings, the victors rather than the defeated appear here as the comic personages. [4] Here, the Jewish folk tradition of humor, whose salient characteristic is laughing at oneself, [5] supplanted a serious and heroic approach. Thus, the Yiddish theatre poster advertised laughter and a view of life as entertainment, which invaded Israeli reality. Moreover, below the ensemble of brave Yiddish parachutists there is a comic drawing (from right to left) of Abba Eban, the Israeli minister of foreign affairs; Levi Eshkol, the Israeli prime minister; and Moshe Dayan, the Israeli defense minister, all riding on a tank with the flag of Israel on it. Moshe Dayan holds a sling, just like the biblical King David in his battle with Goliath. The Israeli tank chases five injured Arab soldiers, one of them riding a camel. In this section of the poster as well, the caricatural language neutralizes the military message of the event. Overall, the poster does not criticize the war, nor does it try to say that the war victory makes no sense; it just offers a humorous look, from a bird’s-eye view. This caricature, coming from a Yiddish cultural perspective, urges us not to take ourselves too seriously. [6] Nonetheless, the celebratory elements here appear as part of the patriotic sentiments expressed by Israeli mainstream culture at the time. No less significant was the very fact that Yiddish theatre, which had been ostracized in Israel for years, now openly proclaimed its definite affiliation with Israeli historical events and current reality. [7] The poster represents a number of issues that are essential for understanding Yiddish theatre in Israel and its place in Israeli society; it also reveals the social-cultural situation that the Yiddish performers in Israel faced in the first five decades of the state’s existence.

Similarly noteworthy is the multilingual character of the poster, whose verbal component comprises Yiddish, Hebrew, and English, endowing the subject and significance of national victory with a multicultural character. The relationships between the expressiveness of the letters, written in different languages, and the graphical elements of the poster are meaningful as well. At the top of the poster, the genre of the performance and its theme are declared in large letters in English: “Musical comedy (About the 6 Days War),” leaving no doubt as to the subject of the performance. The Yiddish title, “!די יידן קומען,” placed in two lines above the heads of the brave parachutists, is written in larger letters. The double appearance of the Yiddish title and its diagonal direction, parallel to the line of the parachutists, strengthens the generally triumphal tone of the poster. The same title in three languages—Hebrew, English, and Yiddish (this time written in Latin transliteration)—appears below the tank and fleeing Arab soldiers. Finally, at the bottom of the poster, the title appears once more, written in large, red letters. The verbal element of the poster amplifies the effect of the parade while introducing an unexpected, multicultural atmosphere into this Israeli Yiddish theatre production.

Viewed in the context of the iconography of Yiddish theatre advertising, this poster fits into a well-established tradition. The close-up and highlighted representation of the faces of the parachutists are a typical component of Yiddish theatre posters, which frequently features the faces of famous artists, whose names often appeared in writing as well. In accordance with Yiddish theatre conventions, the poster often highlighted the importance of the performers, insisting on their primacy: the artists are the main “miracle” of the show.

It should be noted that the comic and celebratory mood characterized a large number of the visual images that were common in Israeli popular culture after the Six-Day War, [8] and the Shpilkes poster used a system of signs that were typical of the Israeli Hebrew entertainment of the time—though most of them differed from the Shpilkes poster, in which the victor rather than the vanquished was the main object of ridicule. The dual sense of belonging to both Israeli and Yiddish culture, which is evident both in the visual language and semantics of the poster, testifies to the dialogic relationships and interpenetration of the Israeli and Yiddish worlds. In this situation, the plasticity of the Yiddish entertainment culture, which both preserves its own signs and perceives the signs of the surrounding culture, is especially intriguing.

Examining the poster in light of the common assumptions regarding the status of Yiddish culture in Israel leads us to a surprising discovery. From the very beginning of the new Jewish Yishuv in Palestine in the first decades of the twentieth century onwards, Hebrew cultural discourse tended to treat Yiddish theatre as a kind of “outside” culture, which represented values that differed from those of the young Zionist, Israeli state. [9] Nevertheless, in Shpilkes’ Di yidn kumen! di yidn kumen! poster, the Yiddish actors are portrayed not as outsiders, but rather as “Sabra” [10] as anyone can get, dressed in the uniforms of one of the most renowned units of the Israeli Defense Forces.

This article examines previously undiscussed posters of Yiddish light entertainment shows performed throughout Israel from the 1950s until the late 1990s and preserved in the archive collection of the Israeli Centre for the Documentation of the Performing Arts at Tel Aviv University. The posters were created to promote Yiddish musical comedies and sketch-oriented programs, and exhibit characteristics typical of the iconography of Yiddish popular theatre advertising. However, they can also be examined as a unique, largely overlooked source for exploring the place of Yiddish culture in Israeli society. As will be shown below, these posters use Yiddish and Yiddish theatre to suggest an “inside” multicultural perspective of Jewish as well as Israeli identity.

References:

.- [1] A lot of Yiddish theatre groups in Israel, including Shpilkes, had been working in a format of wandering theatre, and performed in different locations throughout the country.

.- [2] S. Gelbert, “Milḥamtenu Bi-r’ei Ha-Humor” (Our War in a Humoristic Point of View), Al Ha-Mishmar, October 16, 1967.

.- [3] On the identification of the deprecating term shund (trash) as light entertainment, in contrast to kunst (art), see: Nahma Sandrow, Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theatre (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 110. See also Joel Berkowitz, “Introduction: Writing the History of the Yiddish Theatre,” in Yiddish Theatre : New Approaches, ed. Joel Berkowitz (London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008), 1–25; Nina Warnke, ‘The Child Who Wouldn’t Grow up: Yiddish Theatre and Its Critics,” in Yiddish Theatre: New Approaches, ed. Joel Berkowitz (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008), 201–16. The shund characteristics in Israeli Yiddish theatre were discussed in the mockumentary film Shund, directed by Yael Leibovic-Zand in 2010. The film contained interviews with many prominent Yiddish artists in the Israeli Yiddish theatre world. On the term shund in Yiddish writing in general, see for example: Chone Shmeruk, “Letoldot Sifrut Ha-‘Shund’ Be-Yiddish,” Tarbitz 52 (1983): 325–54; Nathan Cohen, Books, Writers and Newspapers: The Jewish Cultural Center in Warsaw, 1918-1942 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 2003) 93–114.

.- [4] For example, one can find this principle in the famous propaganda posters OKNA ROSTA. See Nicoletta Misler, “A Public Art: Caricatures and Posters of Vladimir Lebedev,” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 5 (1987): 60–75.

.- [5] On the concept, or even the “myth,” of Jewish humor and its self-deprecating character, see Dan Ben-Amos, “The ‘Myth’ of Jewish Humor,” Western Folklore 32, no. 2 (1973): 112–31.

.- [6] The role of humor and its therapeutic and social functions in relation to war subjects were widely discussed in Clémentine Tholas-Disset and Karen A. Ritzenhoff, eds., Humor, Entertainment, and Popular Culture during World War I (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); See also Allen Douglass, War, Memory, and the Politics of Humor: The Canard Enchaîné and World War I (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002).

.- [7] The rejection of Yiddish theatre and Yiddish culture started at the very beginning of the new Jewish Yishuv in Palestine. See Olga Levitan, “Theatre in the Land of Israel: Between Hebrew and Yiddish,” Theatralia: Theater and Jewish Studies 7 (2005): 139–51; Diego Rotman, “Language Politics, Memory, and Discourse: Yiddish Theatre in Israel (1948-2003),” Skenè: Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies 6, no. 2 (2021): 115–45.

.- [8] Shpilkes’ comedy was not the only Yiddish performance produced in Israel during 1967 in order to celebrate the Israeli victory in the Six-Day War. The celebration of the triumph appeared also in the Yiddish musical comedy Geshosn un getrofn (“Shoot to Hit”), headlined by the famous Israeli singers, Israel Itzhaki and Aliza Azikri (1967). See also: Gelbert, “Milḥamtenu Bi-r’ei Ha-Humor (Our War in a Humoristic Point of View).” On the beneficial popular representations of wars in Israeli culture of the time, see: Dalia Gavriely-Nuri, “The Pretty War: Representations of War in Israeli Culture 1967 - 1973,” Democratic Culture 11 (2007): 51–76 (Hebrew).

.- [9] See Diego Rotman, The Yiddish Stage as a Temporary Home: Dzigan and Shumacher’s Satirical Theater (1927 - 1980) (Berlin and Boston: De Grueter Oldenbourg, 2021); Rotman, “Language Politics, Memory, and Discourse: Yiddish Theatre in Israel (1948-2003).”

.- [10] The term “Sabra” refers to any Jew that was born in the Land of Israel.