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.
Doors to the Bimah, Rema Synagogue (Krakow)
The Rema Synagogue, named after the famous rabbi and scholar Moses Isserles (known by the Hebrew acronym “Rema”), was built in 1553 in the city of Kazimierz (today a district of Kraków). It was…
Maḥzor
On this illustrated page from a prayer book, written in an Ashkenazic hand, the scribe Simeon ben Naphtali has added, to the prayers said at a wedding, an image of the prophet Elijah (on the left)…
Printed Amulet
This printed amulet to protect a woman in childbirth features a central scene depicting Adam and Eve and several animals in the Garden of Eden, with a snake coiled around the forbidden “tree of…
Jewish Funeral in Ouderkerk
This etching depicts a body being brought for burial in the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish cemetery at Ouderkerk, the oldest Jewish cemetery (est. 1614) in the Netherlands, located on the Amstel River.
Portrait of Francis (Daniel) Salvador
Francis Salvador (Daniel Francisco Salvador, 1685–1754) was born in Amsterdam. He was a relative of Catherine da Costa, the artist who painted his portrait. He was the grandfather of Francis Salvador…
Catalogo dos Libros que Semuel Ben Israel Soeiro Vende (Catalogue of Books for Sale by Samuel Ben Israel Soeiro)
These three pages come from a catalogue of books listed for sale by Samuel Ben Israel Soeiro, a bookseller in Amsterdam. It lists first the Hebrew books and then the ones in Spanish. He printed the…
Latin-Hebrew Edition of the Mishnah
This page comes from the first of six volumes of Guilielmus Surenhuys’s translation of the Mishnah into Latin, printed in Amsterdam. At center is a depiction of Moses and Aaron standing beside a…
Top: Searching for Hametz; Bottom: Passover Seder Among Sephardic Jews
Between 1723 and 1737, illustrator Bernard Picart partnered with the Dutch bookseller, editor, and publisher Jean-Frédéric Bernard on Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (R…
The Girl of Dreams
In the meantime, they reached HaYarkon Street. The three couples climbed on their bicycles again and said goodbye. From afar, a fire siren was heard, the usual background music of Lag BaOmer. Merav’s…
Outsider
Stealing the TigerThe moment she entered the room, she noticed something suspicious out of the corner of her eye. Dror and Koby stood next to her bed and pretended to tie their shoelaces. She knew…
The Holocaust and Revival Monument
Tumarkin’s Holocaust and Revival Monument is a large, inverted pyramid balanced on its point, originally made of corten (or, weathered) steel and glass. (Its glass panels were removed a few years…
The de Pinto Family House
The de Pinto family were wealthy merchant bankers who lived in Amsterdam from the seventeenth century on. In the Iberian Peninsula, members of the family converted to Christianity at the end of the…