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.
Magid mesharim (Speaker of Truth): Lessons from the Magid
Is your excessive talk beneficial to you? [ . . . ] And do you consider it proper that you peruse the [weekly Pentateuchal] portion twice in Hebrew and…
Testament (Verona)
We, the undersigned, came in to visit the honorable lady Rosa Romanina, widow of R. Moses Guastalla of blessed memory, a resident of Rivarolo, and found her sick, lying on her bed, but her words and…
Sefer ha-masa‘ (Book of the Journey)
Let us return to our first matter, because these two territories, which we discussed, Masterdam [Amsterdam] and Igeltiera [England], in all of them they follow the Sephardic rite from the tribe of…
Rulings
And now, you, my brethren, my people of holy communities in all the places you live, for several years I have been unable to send you reproaches and words of ethics and righteousness. . . . And since…
Responsum: On Resorting to Non-Jewish Law Courts
And now we see that the number of servants breaking away from their Master, our Heavenly Father, increases daily, in that whenever they have a quarrel with their Jewish brothers or sisters they have…
Takkanot (Regulations)
They that went before were affrighted (Job 18:20); [they took] a path that many have trod, princes most honorable (Numbers 22:15); the customs of our fathers are in our hands [b. Shabbat 35b], and it…
Letter
And so let it be known to your Excellency what happened to the letter that your Excellency sent me with the etrogs [citrons]. The letter was not handed to me until the [week of the] Sabbath of Vayetze…
Letter from Jerusalem
How goodly are the tents of Jacob, the dwelling-places of Israel (Numbers 24:5), the synagogues and study houses in Jerusalem, that from morning to evening and from midnight to morning are never…
Letter to Her Husband
Many good, blessed and pleasant years, may they surely come to you and to your head and hairs! To the hands of my lovely, dear, beloved husband, the pious and prudent, worthy R. Loeb, may his Rock and…
Der brantshpigl (The Burning Mirror)
[ . . . ] And when a woman must go out, she should not push through the men and should keep her distance from large groups of men, since this is a great lewdness, and she should not go out…
Darkhe Moshe (The Ways of Moses)
There was a man in Kraków, and his name was Israel, who built with a devoted spirit a synagogue to the Lord, and who was in his generation similar to “the man who says to Ucal and Ithiel” [i.e., like…