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.
Livro de ascamot: A List of the Books in Yeshivat ‘Ets Ḥayim
Established in 1616 as part of a yeshiva in Amsterdam, the Ets Ḥayim library continues to function to this day, making it the oldest operational Jewish library in the world. It moved to its current…
Portrait of Joseph Solomon Delmedigo
This engraving by Willem Jacobsz Delff is based on an earlier portrait of scholar Joseph Solomon Delmedigo by Willem Cornelisz Duyster.
Portrait of Baruch Spinoza
Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza, one of the world’s foremost philosophers, was born in Amsterdam to parents of Portuguese New Christian origin and educated in the Talmud Torah of the Portuguese Sephardic…
Angel
Angels were a recurring theme in Dorchin’s sculptures, many of which include the word “angel” in their titles. Toward the 1980s, he began to use iron for most of his sculptures. This “angel” wall…
Sefer ha-zikhronot (The Book of Memories)
“Blessed be He who shows loving kindness to the undeserving, for he requited me with every kindness” in the dead of night, on Monday, in the early morning of the 9th of Kislew…
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…
Kuntres ha-semikhah (Notebook on Ordination)
This is a short essay on the debate concerning practical halakhic issues that took place between the sages of Safed and those of Jerusalem wherein the sages of Safed saw fit to implement the ruling…
Takkanot (Regulations)
1. When the leaders of the people assembled together, the heads of the holy community of Ludmir (Włodzimierz), in conjunction with all…
Ketubah for Shavuot
In the Sephardic tradition, a “marriage contract” (ketubah), a symbolic betrothal of God and Israel, is read before the Torah reading on the first day of the holiday of Shavuot
Livro de ascamot (Book of Regulations): On Purim
Inasmuch as the members of the mahamad [board of governors] consider it a vile practice among us today for youngsters to strike with…
Me’irat ‘enayim (Light of the Eyes)
Lo! I, the insignificant Joshua Falk, son of my Master, my father, the honorable R. Alexander ha-Kohen of blessed memory, was once young and am now aged (Psalms 37:25), and all my life I grew up among…
‘Olelot Efrayim (The Gleanings of Ephraim)
[Text:] § 22 The Midrash says: “For the sake of four things were our…