Friday, November 15, 2013

Rabbis

In my previous blogpost I included a few images I took while attending a bris on the Lower East Side. In attendance at the bris were quite a few rabbis from the local community, among whom were Rabbi David Feinstein - World renown talmud scholar:


Rabbis Ari, Gersten, and Shmuel Spiegel - the sons of Rabbi Jacob Spiegel who was so helpful to me in creating the original project on the Lower East Side: 


Rabbi Shmuel Spiegel has been assisting me in currently taking the project forward:


Rabbis Shmuel and Gersten Spiegel with Rabbi David Feinstein:




Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Bris

I had the great pleasure this past Sunday to be invited to Congregation Chasam Sofer, a historic synagogue on Manhattan's Lower East Side, to photograph a joyous celebration in the Jewish tradition, an orthodox ritual male circumcision - a bris. It is the rite of passage that Jewish male infants endure to signify Abraham's covenant with G-d. In this particular instance the celebration was doubly joyous because the initiates were twins. It was attended by over 200 men and their families, including Rabbi David Feinstein who is considered to be the most highly respected scholar of the book of Jewish law - the Talmud. More on that in the next post, but here's some images from the ceremony: