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.
Ceremonial Hall, New Jewish Cemetery, Vienna
Architect Ignaz Reiser won a contest to design this ceremonial hall for the New Jewish Cemetery in Vienna. Construction began there in 1926. The most prominent feature of the building was its dome, an…
Komishe nakht (Comical Night)
Advertisement for an October 20, 1918, Yiddish production of Komishe nakht, a French comedy by José Sanz Pérez, adapted into Yiddish by M. Oyerbakh.
Schocken Library, Jerusalem
In 1934, the German-Jewish entrepreneur and philanthropist Salman Schocken (1877–1959) commissioned Mendelsohn to design a villa for him and his family in Jerusalem, where they had fled from Nazi…
Judith Trachtenberg: A Novel
There was a boy, Raphael, and a girl, Judith. The latter gave promise of great beauty. Both received a careful education, in accordance with the requirements of the age, from a tutor, one Herr…
Y’minah, Y’minah
“Y’minah, Y’minah,” c. 1941. Photo credit: The Dorot Jewish Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.
Sideways
Within a few weeks the season arrived for merry walks in the marvelous woods, gay boat rides on the river, poetic campfires beneath dark, satiny skies, boisterous breachings of the silence of the…
Tel Aviv
This building, photographed by Liselotte Grschebina, is one of approximately four thousand Bauhaus-style buildings constructed in Tel Aviv, the most of any city in the world. The Nazi Party’s rise to…
The Deserted
Rosie thought about father—a repressed anxiety that never disappeared altogether and lingered as a dark shadow behind a light and joyful life, like the pale backdrop to a colorful stage—but she did…
At Night
At night once, I awoke in the dark, crowded, loudly snoring railroad car; instantly I saw him on the seat across from me and instantly I recognized him. There he sat, the old, familiar night-Jew, who…
The Cursed Well
Even though the town has a well right in the middle of the marketplace, many of its finest people use river water that they have to carry from the edge of the town half a mile away. The river water is…
“Untitled,” from The Book of Satires
Everyone loved . . . it was a plague
of infatuation, of kisses;
But the people soon became quiet,
the mothers were already nursing.
The drum of youth was laid
in the corner, and the…
Torah Ark Curtain
Each of the four-sided shapes on Siona Shimshi’s Torah ark curtain represents a Jewish holiday, except for the one at left (second from top) with an image of hands arranged for a priestly blessing…