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.
Colophon: Seder taharot (Order of Purification)
So said Jacob ben R. Ḥayim Ibn Adoniyahu of blessed memory, after completing the proofreading of Seder taharot, I intended to apologize, since the subject is not habitual, and the source texts are few…
Tsemaḥ David (The Sprout of David): On the Invention of the Printing Press
The printing of books: began [lit. “was located”] in the city of Mainz, by a Christian man named Johannes Gutenberg of Strasbourg, and this was in the first year of the pious emperor, Friedrich, in…
Sifte yeshenim (Lips of the Sleepers): On Citing Authors
I am astonished to see that for reading just the names of the holy books, one receives his reward, as if he had read and studied them all. If so, then one will not make much of an effort to study…
Ḥeshek Shelomoh (Solomon’s Desire)
The book’s name: This book [Song of Songs] is called a “song,” a noun bearing several meanings. First, it denotes music, as in the verse: all the daughters of song (Ecclesiastes 12:4), which means…
Hiding Places: A Father and His Sons Retrace Their Family’s Escape from the Holocaust
[…] I made the mistake of stopping in for Sabbath services. Dutifully I tried praying but was distracted by the dance of light reflecting from people’s wedding rings on the walls. When everyone stood…
Sigmund Freud
To Freud, all forms of religious observance were foolish and superstitious. His wife Martha, on the other hand, took religion much more seriously, as her grandfather had been a prominent rabbi in…
From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro
The life and literary undertakings of Isaac Orobio de Castro are symbolic of the fate and fortunes of the Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi diaspora in seventeenth-century western Europe. His passage…
Bodily Discharges and Impurity
The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: Speak to the Israelite people and say to them:
When any man has a discharge issuing from his member, he is unclean. [ . . . ]
When one with a discharge…
The Notion of a “Jewish Community” in France
The use of the notion of “community” to define French Judaism is not self-evident. On the one hand, if “community” renders the medieval kahal, the concept has a long history and has engendered any…
Woodcut no. 1
Tkhiyes-hameysim (The Resurrection of the Dead) is a dramatic poem by Moyshe Broderzon inspired by medieval Christian “mystery” (or “miracle”) plays that presented bible stories and were performed in…
The Egg That Disguised Itself
Poet and scholar Dan Pagis wrote and illustrated a children’s book about an egg, which, searching for an alternate identity, tries unsuccessfully to disguise itself as a flower, a mushroom, a clock…
Within the Walls
Scene: The living room of the Herming family house. The walls of the home contain valuable paintings by many of the greatest nineteenth-century Danish national romantic painters.State…