Joyful parades were common throughout the European world (at first in Italy, and from there to Eastern Europe and then all of Europe), as an echo of ancient Roman carnivals. This joyful manner of celebration penetrated Jewish society, and we find that the Jewish community of Prague celebrated three such joyful parades during the 17th and 18th centuries.

The Venetian Carnival with its colorful sights, characters, and atmosphere penetrated the Jewish world in various ways. One of those ways was through the celebration of the Purim festival – the “upside-down” holiday – which was appropriate as a vessel for channeling the culture of breaking free from social conventions and hierarchies. This post examines the question of the heter for dressing up in costume, and the controversy among Tannaim regarding it.

This liturgy was not passed down in an individual, precise, meticulous manner, and this led to a relatively large amount of independence in the divergence between communities and the differences in liturgy from one prayer book to the next.

Prayer Liturgy in the Doctrine of the Eshel Avraham of Buchach: His stance on principle regarding the addition of texts to the prayer liturgy and its execution.

In his 50 years, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Chajes of Zhovkva managed to write an impressive collection of rabbinic compositions, and to publish most of them.