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.
Testament (Sarajevo)
The deed of will which is thus worded. In the community of Israel we have faithfully declared that we the undersigned are witnesses that it is a true and firm fact that the deceased lady, Sra. Rachel…
Letter from Acre to His Father: First Part
After wishing you good health and well-being and kissing your hand, as is befitting, and also to Madame my mother, blessed among women, amen, and to all the members of the household, may the Rock…
Avkat rokhel (Powder of the Merchant)
Hear, ye mountains, the controversy of the Lord, and ye strong foundations of the earth [see Micah 6:2] the lament of my beloved for his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard in a very fruitful hill…
Portrait of Leonore (Rachel) de Alvaro da Costa
Leonore (Rachel) de Alvaro da Costa (1669–1749), the second wife of Don Francisco Lopes Suasso, was descended from a wealthy Portuguese New Christian family who fled the Iberian Peninsula and settled…
Bet Yosef (The House of Joseph): On Marriage Contracts
Question: Reuven has a single daughter, soft and delicate, whom he married to Ḥanokh ben Judah with a dowry of a thousand sultanish. The bride is twelve years old, and in her father’s home she was…
Compendium of Practical Kabbalah
This remarkable manuscript of practical kabbalah was written in Eastern Europe in the mid-eighteenth century; at the end of that century it was owned by the Radvil Hasidic dynasty. In contrast to…
Hanhagot ve-tikunim (Conduct and Regulations)
These are the words of the covenant [see, e.g., Deuteronomy 28:69], the twenty-four enactments that the people of action of the holy society, which is in the holy city of Safed, may it be built and…
Letter from Jerusalem
Now I shall come to fulfill your desire by writing to you at length about the customs of the residents of the land of Israel; for although I also wrote to you by way of the pilgrims, and I sent them…
Title Page: Moses Margolioth’s Ḥasde ha-shem (Mercies of the Lord)
What is sweeter than honey? (Judges 14:18) a honeycomb of delights.
And what is more to be desired than gold, and a multitude of rubies (Proverbs 20:15)?:
This precious treatise of great worth.
Inclu…
Shir ha-ma‘alot le-David (A Song of Ascents, of David)
Seek ye out the book of the Lord (Isaiah 34:16), and read The Holy Epistle [so] called to water the flock, go and browse.
De la divina providencia, ó sea naturaleza universal (On Divine Providence, or Universal Nature)
Reuben:You are right, for there is no way out of such dilemmas and they allow no subterfuge. However, returning to our topic, before I show you the true definition of this noun Nature, I must explain…
El Conciliador (The Reconciler)
Genesis 1:26. Let us make man in our image, as our likeness.
Genesis 9:6. For in the image of God made he man.
Deuteronomy 4:15. And guard ye your souls greatly, for ye saw no manner of…