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.
Juedisches Ceremonial (Jewish Ceremony): Death and Mourning
This illustration depicting Jewish death and mourning rituals (a sick man on his deathbed, a body laid out for burial, and a funeral procession) appeared in the book, Jüdisches Ceremoniel (Jewish…
Minhage Vormeiza (Customs of Worms): On Weddings
On Tuesday afternoon prayers, when the cantor reaches Taḥanun [prayers of supplication], the groom walks to the door of the synagogue while the congregation recites Taḥanun, and…
Sheloshah perushim (Three Commentaries) on the Song of Songs: On the Edition
One day, I was reading a certain book, which contained eight commentaries on the Song of Songs. More precious than pearls they are; all of their commentaries are sapphires, the words of the living God…
Colophon: Tefilah le-Moshe (Prayer of Moses)
All the letters in this beautiful new prayer book,
from beginning to end, I set with my own hands.
Gele, daughter of R. Moses the printer
and Frau Freide, who bore me among ten children, may they…
On the Glory of the Eggplant
Various eggplant recipes have been passed down to us.
the first is one inherited from the late Morena:
you cut it into slices and throw them into the main dish
for that is how she was taught her by…
The Tale of a Kite
It’s safe to say that we Jews of North Main Street are a progressive people. I don’t mean to suggest we have any patience with freethinkers, like that crowd down at Thompson’s Café; tolerant within…
Gayness and God: Wrestlings of an Orthodox Rabbi
I am an Orthodox rabbi and I am gay. For a long while I denied, rejected, railed against this truth. The life story that I had wanted—wife, kids, and a family that modeled Torah and hesed—turned out…
We Turn Our Thoughts
We turn our thoughts to yesterday…to a world that lives only in our memory.
As we recall the days gone by, we know the past is irretrievable.
Yet—through the gift of memory, we recapture treasured…
Reform Synagogue, Plauen
This modern synagogue in Plauen (in the Saxony region) was one of the few synagogues built in Germany in the economically turbulent years of the Weimar Republic. Jews and non-Jews contributed funds…
Untitled, New Yorker, February 3, 1945
By 1945, when this cartoon was published in The New Yorker, Saul Steinberg had already established the unconventional style of cartooning for which he became famous. His cartoons expressed humor…
The Strabismic Jew
The Strabismic Jew is one of Baskin's most famous prints. “Strabismic” means “squinting” and, indeed, the Yiddish inscription reads “The Jew with the squinty eyes.” In this enigmatic woodcut, the face…
The Treasure
Yakhne-Brayne [Reading slowly and with difficulty so that the words run together in a monotone.]:“And God caused the Temple to be destroyed and said, ‘I will remember your sins and you will devour…