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.
A Few Say:
Day unto day bequeaths its fading sun,
and night after night laments for night.
Summer after summer is gathered in fall
and the world in its sorrow gives song.
Tomorrow we’ll die, the word in us…
Illustration to Sholem Aleichem, “The Haunted Tailor”
Sholem Aleichem’s grotesque story “The Haunted Tailor” tells of a poor, witless tailor who is sent on a mission to buy a milk-giving goat, who turns out to be possessed. In the Soviet Union, it was…
A Vision of Yemen: An Ashkenazic Visitor
[ . . . ] [A]n Ashkenazic sage came to Ṣanʿāʾ in the time of Sar Shalom al-ʿIrāqī (d. 1780) . . . and stayed at his house and ate at his table. Fearing for the Ashkenazi’s life, Sar Shalom told him…
Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years
This book tells a true story. In it, what was probably the strangest youth who ever lived, shall speak with its own voice. This life needs to be believed, as strange as it may seem. But strangeness…
My Memories
That was how she watched over the samovar all night long, so that it would boil properly. Occasionally, Grandfather stayed over for several nights at the home of one of the gentry. Then, she would…
In Which World?
A choked wail . . . Mama paces around the narrow room as though asking for something, her hands grasping her head and striking her heart, and with sobs caught in her throat, she calls out:“Woe unto me…
Medal in Honor of the Grand Sanhedrin of Napoleon
Engravers Alexis Joseph Depaulis and Augustin Dupré collaborated on this remarkable Napoleonic-era medal that honored the Grand Sanhedrin, a representative body of seventy-one rabbis and Jewish…
On the Gathering of the Agadah
The written Hebrew agadah [lore and legends transmitted in rabbinic texts] is the primary literary form that was dominant for several centuries in the world of unbounded folk and individual creation…
Dohány Street Synagogue
The Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest is the largest synagogue in Europe, and the second largest in the world, capable of accommodating three thousand people. The Moorish- and Byzantine-inspired…
A Jewish Wedding in South Russia
Of all festivities celebrated among the Jews in southern Russia, the wedding ceremony has suffered the greatest loss of characteristic elements of folk tradition. Even among the poorest, weddings are…
Letter from an Egyptian Jewish Deist on Why He Will Not Convert to Islam
You said, in the beginning of the second page, “The young man then adopted the Muslim religion.” Please omit this because I did not change the faith of my parents, although I respect the three…
Letter to Chaim Weizmann
The Secretary
Zionist Organisation
London
Baghdad, 8th September 1922
Dear Sir,
I have the pleasure to acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 20th July 1922. It is needless to say that I greatly…