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.
Of the High Priest’s Tribe
An important Jewish genre painter, Kaufman drew inspiration for his romantic depictions of traditional Jewish life from trips to Moravia and Upper Hungary, Galicia and Bukovina and areas of Russian…
Forverts Excursion and Raffle
The heading of this advertisement for an “excursion” offered by the Yiddish daily newspaper Forverts reads: “From where are you a landsman?” (i.e., What town did you come from in the old county?). It…
Barnett Freedman
Rothenstein was one of the best-known and most prolific British portraitists of the first half of the twentieth century. His style confounds easy characterization. He considered himself both a…
Unemployed Yiddish Writers
The writers of the radical press (also) have the full right to life, to be free, and to seek their fortune in—a bread line.
Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars
Sheet music for “Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars,” a comic song about a Jewish businessman on his deathbed trying to collect money owed him. “Yiddish dialect songs” were popular performance pieces…
Cohen of Trinity
He came across the meadows towards the sunset, his upturned face pushed forwards catching the light, and glowing also with another radiance than the rich, reflected glory of the heavens.
A curious…
Tevye the Dairyman
Well, no sooner had I thought of my Hodl than she appeared by my side. She sat down next to me on the stoop, looked around, and said in a low voice, “Papa, are you listening? I have to tell you…
The Jewish Gauchos
This collection of short vignettes about life in the Jewish agricultural colonies was published for Argentina’s independence centennial. It presents their experience as redemptive.
Romance of a Horse Thief
Tirzeh rose early the following morning, cooked some schav, beat in several eggs, boiled a pot of potatoes, and put the food on the table to cool. As soon as she sat down, she remembered…
Saâda the Moroccan
Meanwhile, the beautiful Saâda wandered the streets of Blidah . . . She continued straight ahead, without purpose or thought.
She went . . . She found Blida banal with its one-story European…
Archaic Jewish Wedding Rituals
VII.
The Marshalek.—His Duties.—The Serenade.—At The Bride’s “Main Quarters.”—The Reception at the Groom’s.—The Ritual of Seating of the Bride.—The Marshalek’s Improvisation.
The rituals and…
Mărculeşti Colony Correspondence (on the New Train Station)
Like most of the other colonies established in Bessarabia in the previous century, the colony went through a long sleepy period. Most of the farmers lived simple bucolic lives. In the summer, they…