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.
1920 Diary
Finally, a town. We ride through the shtetl of Tartakuv, Jews, ruins, cleanliness of a Jewish kind, the Jewish race, little stores.
I am still ill, I’ve still not gotten back on…
On the Question of Languages
We may assume that the executive committee of Aḥdut Ha-Avoda did what was necessary to explain our position to our allied organizations abroad, the exact situation of the question of language in Eretz…
Day Grows Darker
Day grows darker
And darker.
Mobs are advancing on the town,
Mobs clotted with blood,
Made remorseless by killing children,
Lustfully they advance,
To rip off heads,
Feeble, melancholy heads.
They…
We’re Laughing Our Heads Off
We’re laughing our heads off:
None of us wears a top-hat
We just go around with heads—or without heads—
But the Rabbi of Uman
Holds up a mirror to the sun.
We laugh our heads off
When a gang comes…
Call It Sleep
Another week had passed. The two men had just gone off together. With something of an annoyed laugh, his mother went to the door and stood fingering the catch of the lock. Finally she lifted it…
Le Grand Pas (Score)
Score of “Le Grand Pas” from the ballet Paquita, which premiered in Paris in 1846 and which, in adapted form, became a mainstay of classical ballet.
Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue
Kneseth Eliyahoo was endowed in honor of Baghdad-born Eliyahoo (Elias) David Sassoon (1820–1880), son of textile magnate David Sassoon (1792–1864), by Elias’s sons. The synagogue was constructed in…
La tragedia della fame (The Tragedy of Hunger)
This sketch by Aldo Carpi is one of a series he made during World War I, documenting not only the carnage of the battlefield but also refugees displaced by the war. The Serbian army retreated to…
Head of a Young Jew (Self-Portrait)
Head of a Young Jew, Natan Altman’s most famous sculpture, is an expression of his desire to set a new, modern course for Jewish art. The asymmetrical sculpture, a combination of bronze, copper, and…
Chinese Restaurant
Max Weber’s Chinese Restaurant was one of a number of paintings with the same subject made in the early twentieth century by American artists. Chinatown and Chinese restaurants were popular tourist…
The Watchmaker
Like other paintings by Yehudah Pen, The Watchmaker depicts an encounter between a traditional Jew and modernity. Here, a traditionally dressed watchmaker reads the Warsaw Yiddish newspaper Haynt…
Portrait of Marc Chagall
Yehudah Pen painted this portrait of Marc Chagall soon after Chagall returned to Vitebsk from Paris in order to marry his sweetheart, Bella. While he was there, World War I broke out, and Chagall was…