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.
O my creator!: On Entering the Synagogue
O my creator! Pay heed to the servant that knocks at your doors; open up for him the entrance to the lintel of your dwelling place.
As he lifts up his eyes to you, may his supplication, his cries…
Colophon: Elye Bokher’s Petaḥ devaray
And thus was finished the book Petah DebaraiIn the name of the living God my redeemer and rockIn the year of the creation 306On the 29th day of TishriEdited by the Hebrew grammarianElijah the Levita…
Proofreader’s Preface: Seder tefilot ke-minhag kahal kadosh Sefarad (The Order of the Prayers of the Holy Congregation of Spain)
Menasseh ben Joseph ben Israel, seeing the Bomberg types worn out, and since nothing can be imperfect for the Holy Work, arose from within the community and went out, and came to the house of an…
Ḥerem against the Karaites
We have placed in ḥerem [excommunication] David Henriq[ue]s, alias David Almansa, [and] Aron and Ishack Dias da Fonseca and the account reads, as follows:
(In Adar I). The gentlemen of the Mahamad…
Dreaming of Junk Food
Leehee woke me up at a quarter of four in the afternoon and asked me to come with them to Ein Hod for the Seder, despite everything.
“Don’t do this to me,” I said. “You know I’m not…
Exiled from Exile: Existential Reflections
To be in exile, with a religious or historical sense that one is exiled, is to have already a mission and purpose in life. One’s clear project then is to end the exile and to return to…
On Women and Judaism
On occasion I have been asked: How can one so rooted in Jewish tradition, so at home with halakhic prescriptions and proscriptions…
One People, Two Worlds: A Reform Rabbi and an Orthodox Rabbi Explore the Issues That Divide Them
February 9, 2000Dear Ammi,It was a pleasure meeting you in person last week. […]I wonder what the staff and the other patrons thought about the two of us sitting there, me with my beard, peyot, and…
Miriam HaNeviah
Miriam, one of the few women in the Bible to be called a prophet, provides an important opportunity for contemporary liturgists to expand the male-dominated framework of traditional Jewish prayer.
Portrait of Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Tsemakh Tsedek)
Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (1789–1866), the third rebbe of Chabad Hasidism, was a preeminent religious figure of nineteenth-century East European Jewry. The portrait is an early example of Boris…
English Ketubah (New York)
This staunchly Reform ketubah—it is entirely in English—reflects the changing nature of the Hebrew Publishing Company, which had long published primarily for the Yiddish- and Hebrew-using immigrant…
Pakhar’ (Ploughman)
Anatoly Kaplan’s painting Pakhar’ both commemorates the lost Jewish world of his childhood and reflects accepted Soviet iconography. The Yiddish inscription that frames the central image reads,…