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.
Silver Signet Ring
Silver signet ring with image of galloping griffin, a hybrid creature that consists of feline body and legs, avian head and wings, and serpentine tail. Found in a burial cave in the Ketef Hinnom…
Rattles
These hollow, spool-shaped terra-cotta objects from Beth Shemesh would hold one or more pellets (often small pebbles) that when shaken would produce a sound. They have been considered babies’ toys…
Dietary Laws: Animals and and Impurity
The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying to them: Speak to the Israelite people thus:
These are the creatures that you may eat from among all the land animals: any animal that has true hoofs, with…
Prophets
When you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. Let no one be found among you who consigns his son or daughter…
A Ruling about Blasphemy and Talion
There came out among the Israelites one whose mother was Israelite and whose father was Egyptian. And a fight broke out in the camp between that half-Israelite and a certain Israelite. The son of…
Bequest of a House to a Daughter
On the 21st of Kislev, that is day 21 of Mesore, year 6 of Artaxerxes the king, Mahseiah son of Jedaniah, a Jew, hereditary-property-holder in Elephantine the fortress of the detachment of Haumadata…
Jankiel’s Concert
Jankiel’s Concert was inspired by a scene from Pan Tadeusz, Adam Mickiewicz’s 1834 epic poem, considered the national poem of Poland. The character of Jankiel, the Jewish innkeeper, is the most…
Jeremiah’s Letter to the Jewish Exiles in Babylonia
This is the text of the letter which the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the priests, the prophets, the rest of the elders of the exile community, and to all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar…
Passover Letter
To my brothers Jedaniah and his colleagues the Jewish Troop, your brother Hananiah.May the gods seek the welfare of my brothers at all times.And now, this year, year 5 of Darius the king, word has…
Drawing Based on the Ceiling of the Mohilev Synagogue
Issachar Ber Ryback’s drawings of the painted ceiling of what was known as the Cold Synagogue in Mogilev (today in Belarus) are among the few visual records of the work of the painter Chaim ben…
Plan for the Zikhron Ya‘akov Settlement and Its Buildings
Zikhron Ya‘akov was first established near the city of Haifa as a Jewish agricultural settlement in 1882 by members of a Jewish nationalist association from northeastern Romania. These immigrants, the…
The Bimah at the Wooden Synagogue, Kamionka Strumiłowa
The wooden synagogue in Kamionka Strumiłowa was built in the late seventeenth century. Its walls were covered in colorful paintings and, as in most wooden synagogues, the bimah occupied a central…