​This is a drawing by the artist Alphonse Lévy showing a woman preparing matzah balls for the Pesach meals. The woman is smiling and is dressed in work clothes. She seems very used to making this special Pesach food! On the table next to her is a large bowl of matzah balls and a pestle and mortar for preparing the spices. The title of the picture is written in Judeo-Alsatian and reads "Matzah Gnepflish." The caption under the drawing reads Pesach (in Hebrew) and matzah balls (in French).

Would You Like to Know More?

Alphonse Lévy - Alphonse Lévy (1843-1918) was a Jewish artist from Alsace (a region in eastern France) who drew many pictures of Alsatian and Algerian Jews performing various rituals and customs. This was at a time when many European Jews were abandoning religion for the sake of integrating into modern society. Some of his drawings were included in Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's late nineteenth-century book about the Jews.