Jewish Dress

Dress and ornament are powerful expressions of our identities. They communicate volumes about our national affiliations, our class, our gender identities and more. It is perhaps shocking, then, and certainly enlightening, to examine the ways Jews are depicted by Jewish artists in Jewish manuscripts and prints through the ages. What we discover in these images is that Jews almost always dressed in the same fashion as their neighbors (the exception is pious Jews in modern Ashkenaz). This means that Jews, even while identifying strongly as Jews, also identified with their current homes, whether Italian, Spanish, German, or other. As you view the illustrations found in our manuscripts and rare books, you will quickly conclude that a Jew could mostly not be distinguished from their neighbor by their dress. What do we learn from this lack of distinction? Inevitably, that Jews had regular, more common relations with their neighbors than has often been assumed.