Sample Sources
The sources below are those contained in our three curated collections—covering themes of Passover, Gender Roles, and Holocaust Resistance. They represent a fraction of the thousands of sources that will be available when the full site launches in 2024.
Portrait of a Man, Thought to Be Dr. Ephraim Bueno
Rembrandt lived in the part of Amsterdam where the artist’s guild (St. Luke’s Guild) was located; by coincidence, it was home also to a number of Jews. His artworks attest to an interest in the…
Book of Prayers for the Gravediggers Society
This illustration from a book of prayers for the Jewish Gravediggers Society depicts the cycle of life. Figures of men and women in pairs ascend and descend the staircase, progressing from youth to…
Talmud
The twelve-volume “Bermann Talmud'' was financed by the Court Jew Behrend Lehmann (Issachar Bermann Segal), printed in Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany, by Michael Gottschalk, and published by John…
Haggadah (Mantua)
This Haggadah from Mantua, published by the Christian printer Giacomo Rufinelli under the supervision of Isaac ben Solomon Bassan, relies heavily on the Prague Haggadah of 1526, with the addition of…
A Ruling on the Printing of the Zohar
The earth made noise as did the heavens, and the doorposts are shaking at the voice crying out that it would be wrong to publish hidden and sealed materials and to break through the fence established…
Livro de ascamot (Book of Regulations): On a Banned Book
In meetings of the community’s Mahamad [board of governors], past and present, discussions were held about a book that Gideon [Abudiente] ordered printed concerning the…
Kaddish for a Child Not Born
A Holocaust survivor grapples with the question: should one bring children into the world after experiencing the horrors of the death camps?
The Rabbi in the Attic
[…] What rabbi would come to this impoverished nowhere for the pishochs we offered, especially if he had to rent his own lodgings—the congregation had no money for an apartment when a perfectly good…
In Good Faith
“Eretz Israel.” There is not one. We already grew up on one sublime Eretz Israel which is almost the be-all-and-end-all of everything. The place of the Jewish people. Its homeland, its right, its…
Judaism and Abortion
Balfour Brickner’s testimony was presented at hearings before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments.
Keep Halacha Out of the Courts
The decision of 15 February 1983 by the New York State Court of Appeals in the Case of Avitzur v. Avitzur has been hailed by religious and legal scholars alike. The decision recognized…