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.
Kedushat Yom Tov (The Sanctity of Yom Tov)
Reuben spoke in the marketplace with two men, inviting them to come to his house for the purpose of giving them the monies accrued from a business partnership, and they entered his house…
Hut ha-meshulash (Threefold Cord)
The Hasid praises the Almighty on the right hand, and the unbeliever tosses away and truncates the principles of faith on the left, while the Torah scholar, standing in the center, maintains silence…
Silliness and Sanctimony
Yetkhen:And how crude he was with me! He wants to arrange with Papa to marry me! How do you like that? I’d like to meet the man who’ll force me to marry someone! No! No father can do that—I have…
Letter Addressed to the Conference of Constantinople in Favor of the Jews of the Orient
Paris, December 1876
To Mr. President and Members of the Conference of Constantinople
Sirs,
You were nominated to discuss the interests of a great number of people in the Orient, and to accomplish a…
La Reine de Chypre
La reine de Chypre (The Queen of Cyprus) is a grand opera in five acts, first performed in Paris in 1841. It is regarded as one of the greatest works of the composer Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie…
Celebratory Processional in Prague to Honor Joseph II
A month after the birth of future Emperor Joseph II (March 13, 1741), the Jews of Prague held a festive procession in honor of the happy event. The procession, which was planned and led by the…
Synagogue Judaica
This is the frontispiece of a 1661 edition of Synagoga Judaica, a study of the customs and culture of German Jewry by Christian Hebraist, and polemical critic of Judaism, Johannes Buxtorf the Elder…
Tombstone of Mordechai Franco Mendes and His Wife Sara Franco Mendes
This gravestone in the oldest Jewish cemetery in the Netherlands (est. 1614), that of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Community of Amsterdam, is inscribed in memory of Mordechai Franco Mendes (d…
Bomberg Babylonian Talmud
Printing, which Jews adopted immediately after its invention, helped to unify far-flung communities. Where previously Jewish learning had been transmitted through the individual copying of manuscripts…
Introduction: Simeon bar Tsemaḥ, Sefer ha-tashbets
This is both Sinai and the uprooter of mountains, the book Sefer Hatashbeṣ, which was composed by the king, the great eagle, the renowned sage, the grand prince, the light of…
Letter to His Son
To be given to my dearly beloved and pleasant son-in-law—who fears sin and all whose deeds are worthy—the respected Mr. Falk.
He who delivers this letter, on him be blessing.
From the holy community…
Pardes rimonim (Garden of Pomegranates)
One who uses the Ineffable Name in this world will have a great punishment, and the reason for this is that he mentions holy letters in impurity, and combines that which is holy with that which is…