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.
Come to Palestine
Raban was known as a designer, painter, and book illustrator but also designed at least two posters, including this one for the Society for the Promotion of Travel in the Holy Land. The poster’s…
Jew from Poland
Lerski’s portrait of a young Polish Jewish immigrant to Palestine is in his distinctive, expressionist style. Using mirrors and reflectors to emphasize the transformative powers of light, Lerski liked…
Portrait of Fanny von Arnstein
Fanny von Arnstein (née Itzig; 1758–1818) was born into a prominent Jewish banking family in Berlin and married a leading Viennese financier. She entertained many luminaries at her famous salon. Having…
A Jewish Wedding in South Russia
Of all festivities celebrated among the Jews in southern Russia, the wedding ceremony has suffered the greatest loss of characteristic elements of folk tradition. Even among the poorest, weddings are…
For the Sixtieth Jubilee of the Poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik
Yeshurun sings, when in him it sees a delicate beauty in the bloom of her youth
playing the lyre in her bosom’s embrace, her song gladdening the sorrowful heart.
A charming doe [even] without kohl…
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…
Map of the City of Venice, ca. 1729
This eighteenth-century map of Venice includes the ghetto within which the city’s Jews were required to live from 1516 until Napoleon’s conquest of the Republic of Venice in 1797. The Venice ghetto…
The Esnoga (Portuguese Synagogue) in Amsterdam
To celebrate the opening of the Esnoga synagogue in Amsterdam in 1675, the Sephardic community commissioned the distinguished artist Romeyn de Hooghe to depict its dedication. In 1670, Amsterdam’s…