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.
Israeli Blues
“Secular is a terrible word”; “secular is a word I don’t like,” “there is no such thing as a secular Jew”—these clichés are common among absolutely secular intellectuals when they discuss problems of…
Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue Music in Nineteenth-Century Reform Sources from Hamburg: Ancient Tradition in the Dawn of Modernity
Let us begin with the most basic questions: Can oral traditions of music constitute a reliable source for historical research? While this question is applicable to most music…
Hot Tea and Sponge Cake at 10:00 P.M.
My mother and father were an embarrassment to me, up until high school. They were much older than my friends’ parents (my dad was forty-seven and my mother was forty-four when I was born), and they…
Reform Judaism: A Centenary Perspective
The Central Conference of American Rabbis has on special occasions described the spiritual state of Reform Judaism. The centenaries of the founding of the Union of American Hebrew…
Adonay, Our People Have Called You
Adonay,
Our people have called You Monarch of the universe.
Help us who live without a monarch on a throne
To perceive Your sovereignty
In the royal splendor that pervades the universe,
In the holy…
Diskin Orphanage, Jerusalem
Bassan is particularly well known for his photographs of the Old Yishuv, the community of Jews established well before the arrival of Zionist pioneers. He was the first Jewish photographer born in…
Astérix le Gaulois, no. 1, cover
Astérix le Gaulois is set in the first century BCE, during Rome’s conquest of Gaul (France), focusing on the inhabitants of a small village who, given superhuman strength by a magic potion prepared by…
Portrait of a Man
Though he also worked in other media, Dmitry Borisovitch Lion preferred to work with ink on paper. His drawings have feathery, broken lines, and sometimes include text, illegible letters, and shapes…
Self-Portrait
This is one of only four known self-portraits by Camille Pissarro. It was painted around the time that Pissarro and other rebellious artists broke from the traditional art establishment by forming…
La juive
The plot of La Juive (The Jewish Woman), an opera in five acts, centered around a romance between a Jewish woman and a Christian man. It was one of the most popular operas of the nineteenth century.
To the Readers (of Yerushalayim)
As I was completing the first volume of this book of ours, I was on my way to Vienna, and the late scholar, Mr. [Peretz] Smolenskin of blessed memory, in his desire to complete the printing, wrote…
Resolution Favoring Zionism
A convention of Orthodox Congregations met in New York, Wednesday, June 8, 1898. A resolution favoring Zionism was adopted.The principles of the convention adopted are as follows:This Conference of…