Fantasy character concept by Bayard
Wu

Ghanaian Jewish man sews challah covers in Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana; 2016 x

The Ghanaian Jewish community claims to be decedent from the Jewish community of Bilad el-Sudan, who were nearly completely wiped out when they were forcibly converted in 1492 by the Songhai Empire. The Sefwi people, who live in western Ghana, have an oral history that tells of them migrating from Mali and Gambia and through many centuries of assimilation and antisemitism, converted to Christianity. In 1977, a Sefwi man named Aaron Ahomtre Toakyirafa is credited for connecting certain practices of the Sefwi, such as circumcision, refusing to work on Shabbat, and the laws of kashrut, to Judaism. The community has been connected with the worldwide Jewish community since the 1990′s and is especially known for making challah covers – such as in the picture above – which can be purchased here.

Shabbat Shalom from all of us at the Jewish Virtual Library!

Not so happily ever after: Fairytales that lay undiscovered for 150 years tell stories of wicked step-fathers witch-slaying princesses and scared young princes

vinegardoppio:

The stories were compiled by German historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth in the 1880s – around the same time as the Brothers Grimm folk tales – from across the Bavarian region of Oberpfalz.

While the well-known Grimm fairytales often feature a vulnerable princess and dragon-slaying hero, Schönwerth reverses their roles – offering readers powerful female and vulnerable male characters.

In Schönwerth’s fantastical version Cinderella, for example, the heroine uses her golden – not glass – slippers to rescue her lover from beyond the moon.

yoooooooooo omg