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.
The Siloam Inscription
[The matter of] the breakthrough: And this is the matter of the breakthrough. While [the hewers were swinging the] axe, each towards his companion, and while there were still three cubits to he[w…
Bulla from Beth Zur
Belonging to Gealyahu son of the king.
Translated by Nahman Avigad and Benjamin Sass.
Destruction of the Ghetto
In 1919, during a civil war raging in Ukraine, a wave of pogroms swept the area around Kiev. In one of them, Manievich’s son was killed, and this painting expresses his grief. The destroyed homes and…
Poet Avraham Shlonsky
Tagger was a member of what is known as the Land of Israel movement, a group of artists who, in the 1920s, broke with the conventions of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts. They drew on the ideas…
Schocken Library, Jerusalem
In 1934, the German-Jewish entrepreneur and philanthropist Salman Schocken (1877–1959) commissioned Mendelsohn to design a villa for him and his family in Jerusalem, where they had fled from Nazi…
Judith Trachtenberg: A Novel
There was a boy, Raphael, and a girl, Judith. The latter gave promise of great beauty. Both received a careful education, in accordance with the requirements of the age, from a tutor, one Herr…
Tel Aviv
This building, photographed by Liselotte Grschebina, is one of approximately four thousand Bauhaus-style buildings constructed in Tel Aviv, the most of any city in the world. The Nazi Party’s rise to…
Nahal Oz
Nahal Oz, located in the Negev close to the border of the Gaza strip, was founded in 1951 as Israel’s first Nahal settlement. These were established by soldiers to provide a first line of defense…
A Messenger’s Coming to You Today
A messenger’s coming to you today.
I’m the one who sent him.
He’s bringing a bag of gifts.
Don’t bolt the door on him.
He’s bringing a bag of gifts.
I collected and watched them.
He’ll lay them at…
Torah Ark Curtain
Each of the four-sided shapes on Siona Shimshi’s Torah ark curtain represents a Jewish holiday, except for the one at left (second from top) with an image of hands arranged for a priestly blessing…
The Jew
Moses, from whose loins I sprung,
Lit by a lamp in his blood
Ten immutable rules, a moon
For mutable lampless men.
The blonde, the bronze, the ruddy,
With the same heaving blood,
Keep tide to the…
A Report on the Community of Isfahan
In response to questions put by the correspondent of the journal Der Israelit of Mayence to the (Chief) Rabbi of the Jewish community of Isfahan concerning the situation of that community, the (Chief…