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From Buenos Aires to Warsaw, ‘The Bride’ comes home
For almost 100 years, “The Bride,” a magnificent painting by Polish Jewish artist Maurycy Minkowski (1881–1930), has been in exile.
In 1930, Minkowski traveled to Buenos Aires for an exhibition of more than 200 of his works. And then tragedy struck. As a child, he had lost his hearing due to an accident. While walking on the street shortly before the exhibit’s opening, he was struck by an oncoming vehicle whose approach he couldn’t hear. The paintings, which were exhibited posthumously, stayed in Argentina and were dispersed.
Since then, Fundación IWO — the Buenos Aires branch of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in Vilna — managed to acquire more than 80 of Minkowski’s paintings, some at auction and many through a coordinated effort during the 1940s to rescue 60 works that had been pawned or were on consignment with dealers trying to sell them.
IWO’s Minkowski collection, the largest in the world, was almost lost during the 1994 bombing of the AMIA building (the Buenos Aires Jewish community center), where IWO’s holdings were kept. A volunteer rescue team led by IWO’s academic director Ester Szwarc saved the paintings from the rubble. “The Bride” was among them.
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw had long expressed strong interest in including this painting in its core exhibition. Already in 2007, Renata Piątkowska, Chief Curator of Collections, had proposed “The Bride” for the museum’s exhibit on the Jewish wedding and its transformations in the 19th century.
On Nov. 7, 2025, almost 20 years later, that dream came true. The painting arrived at POLIN Museum to great fanfare, as a landmark gift from IWO made possible by funding from philanthropist and POLIN Museum Council member, Ronald S. Lauder.
Maurycy Minkowski was born into a well-to-do Warsaw family. He attended a school for the deaf, which encouraged his artistic talent. Minkowski graduated from the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts with a gold medal in 1905 and returned to Warsaw. He was shaken by the bloody pogroms and devastation of the Jewish community that he witnessed there and elsewhere that year. This experience prompted him to shift his focus from landscapes and portraits to the trauma of Jews fleeing violence. Those powerful paintings capture the desperation of masses of Jews on the run with nowhere to go. He is best known for these works, although he was never fully appreciated in his lifetime, neither in Poland, nor in Argentina.
Minkowski moved to Paris in 1908 and in the years that followed turned to scenes of Jewish daily life, essentially in the shtetl. It was around 1920 that he painted “The Bride,” one of several of his works on this theme. The bride’s attire and that of the married women surrounding her recall the clothing of Jewish women more than a century earlier.
The married women are dressed in keeping with tsnies, modesty. Their short hair is covered with an elaborately embroidered bonnet, shimmering with metallic thread. There is also the hint of a shterntikhl, a bejeweled panel along the front of the head covering; a brusttukh, a decorative panel on their chest, and a helzl, a ruff, around their neck.
The bride’s hair has not yet been shorn and is not yet covered. All the women are holding a prayerbook — it was customary to give the bride a beautifully bound prayerbook as a wedding gift. Set in an exquisite wooden frame hand carved by Minkowski himself, the painting captures the solemnity of this moment, as the bride contemplates her future after the wedding. The lives of Jewish women — not only their dress and weddings — would be transformed beyond recognition in the decades that followed.
“This remarkable painting is a true testament to Maurycy Minkowski’s artistic talent and his deep connection to Jewish culture,” said Zygmunt Stępiński, Director of POLIN Museum, when the painting arrived. The work will be the centerpiece of a reimagined presentation in 2027 on the evolution of the Jewish wedding during the nineteenth century.
The post From Buenos Aires to Warsaw, ‘The Bride’ comes home appeared first on The Forward.
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UK PM Starmer Says There Could Be New Powers to Ban Pro-Palestinian Marches
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer gives a media statement at Downing Street in London, Britain, April 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jack Taylor/File photo
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government could ban pro-Palestinian marches in some circumstances because of the “cumulative effect” the demonstrations had on the Jewish community after two Jewish men were stabbed in London on Wednesday.
Starmer told the BBC that he would always defend freedom of expression and peaceful protest, but chants like “Globalize the Intifada” during demonstrations were “completely off limits” and those voicing them should be prosecuted.
Pro-Palestinian marches have become a regular feature in London since the October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel that triggered the Gaza war. Critics say the demonstrations have generated hostility and become a focus for antisemitism.
Protesters have argued they are exercising their democratic right to spotlight ongoing human rights and political issues related to the situation in Gaza.
Starmer said he was not denying there were “very strong legitimate views about the Middle East, about Gaza,” but many people in the Jewish community had told him they were concerned about the repeat nature of the marches.
Asked if the tougher response should focus on chants and banners, or whether the protests should be stopped altogether, Starmer said: “I think certainly the first, and I think there are instances for the latter.”
“I think it’s time to look across the board at protests and the cumulative effect,” he said, adding that the government needed to look at what further powers it could take.
Britain raised its terrorism threat level to “severe” on Thursday amid mounting security concerns that foreign states were helping fuel violence, including against the Jewish community.
“We are seeing an elevated threat to Jewish and Israeli individuals and institutions in the UK,” the head of counter-terrorism policing, Laurence Taylor, said in a statement, adding that police were also working “against an unpredictable global situation that has consequences closer to home, including physical threats by state-linked actors.”
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War Likely to Resume After Trump’s Rejection of Latest Proposal, Says IRGC General
Iranians carry a model of a missile during a celebration following an IRGC attack on Israel, in Tehran, Iran, April 15, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
i24 News – A senior Iranian military figure said that fighting with the US was “likely” to resume after President Donald Trump stated he was dissatisfied with Tehran’s latest proposal, regime media reported on Saturday.
The comments of General Mohammad Jafar Asadi, one of the top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, were relayed by the Fars news agency, considered as a mouthpiece of the the powerful paramilitary body.
“Evidence has shown that the Americans do not not adhere to any commitments,” Asadi was quoted as saying.
He further added that Washington’s decision-making was “primarily media-driven aimed first at preventing a drop in oil prices and second at extricating themselves from the mess they have created.”
Iranian armed forces are ready “for any new adventures or foolishness from the Americans,” he said, going to assert that the Iran war would prove for the US a tragedy comparable with what was for Israel the October 7 massacre.
“Just as our martyred Leader said that the Zionist regime will never be the same as before the Al‑Aqsa Storm operation [the name chosen by Hamas leadership for the October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel], the United States will also never return to what it was before its attack on Iran,” he said. “The world has understood the true nature of America, and no matter how much malice it shows now, it is no longer the America that many once feared.”
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Trump Says US Navy Acting ‘Like Pirates’ to Carry Out Naval Blockade of Iranian Ports
A view of Iranian-flagged cargo ship M/V Touska as the US Navy Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer USS Spruance conducts its interception in a location given as the north Arabian Sea, in this screen capture from a video released April 19, 2026. Photo: CENTCOM/Handout via REUTERS
President Donald Trump said on Friday the US Navy was acting “like pirates” in carrying out Washington’s naval blockade of Iranian ports during the US and Israel’s war against Iran.
Trump made the comments while describing the seizure by US forces of a ship a few days ago.
“We took over the ship, we took over the cargo, we took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business,” Trump said in remarks on Friday evening. “We’re like pirates. We’re sort of like pirates but we are not playing games.”
Some of Tehran’s vessels have been seized by the US after leaving Iranian ports, along with sanctioned container ships and Iranian tankers in Asian waters.
Iran has blocked nearly all ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz apart from its own since the start of the war. Trump has imposed a separate blockade of Iranian ports.
The US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. Iran responded with its own strikes on Israel and Gulf states that host US bases. US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed thousands and displaced millions.
The war has raised oil prices and led to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for about 20 percent of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.
Trump, who has offered shifting timelines and goals for the war that remains unpopular in the US, has faced widespread condemnation over his comments on the conflict, including when he threatened to destroy Iran’s entire civilization last month.
Many US experts said last month that American strikes on Iran may amount to war crimes after Trump threatened to target civilian infrastructure.