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.
Sefirotic Tree
This elaborate Italian kabbalistic manuscript depicts the inner processes of the divine (the sefirot) in the shape of a tree (in Hebrew, ilan), or tree of life. Visualization plays an important part…
Ketubah for Isaac Pereira and Rachel de Pinto
This ketubah was written and illustrated for the wedding of Isaac Pereira and Rachel de Pinto, members of prominent Sephardic families. At the top a pair of hands clasp, and vignettes along the sides…
Ketubah (Rome)
This intricately decorated ketubah (marriage contract) marks the marriage of Gabriel ben Hezekiah Amron to Simḥa bat Shabbetai mi-Segni. It is richly decorated with biblical miniatures, including one…
Velika Avlija (Old Synagogue), Sarajevo
The Velika Avlija (Old Temple or Synagogue) is the oldest synagogue in Sarajevo. It served the city’s first Jewish community, Sephardim, who began arriving in Sarajevo in the mid-sixteenth century…
Horb Synagogue (Horb am Main, Germany)
The interior of the wooden Horb synagogue (completed in 1735) is richly decorated in typical East European style, which artist Eliezer Zusman, originally from Brody, introduced to southern Germany…
Jewish Widow and Jewish Matron
This watercolor from the Gennadius Library’s Costume Album collection, in Athens, depicts two Jewish women—a widow (left) and a married woman (right)—in the colorful traditional attire of…
Sefer ha-kavanot (Kabbalistic Intentions in Prayer and Performance of Precepts)
This manuscript copy of Sefer ha-kavanot (The Book of [Kabbalistic] Intentions [in Prayer and Performance of Precepts]) by Ḥayim Vital was written in Meknes, Morocco. The kabbalists in Safed stressed…
House of the Book, Brandeis-Bardin Institute, Brandeis, California
The minimalist aesthetic of the House of the Book, a chapel and conference hall, matches other buildings designed by Eisenshtat, a leading American synagogue architect. While he often favored…
If Not, Not
If Not, Not is one of Kitaj’s best-known works. Inspired by T. S. Eliot’s poem, "The Waste Land" (the poet is depicted at bottom left), it portrays a chaotic landscape, storm-swept and strewn with…
Dissolving Myths
Maor was a member of The Common Factor: Kibbutz, a group of artists who were interested in criticizing long-held Zionist and socialist beliefs and myths, at a time when many felt that the kibbutz…
Yad Vashem Children’s Holocaust Memorial, Jerusalem, Israel
In 1976, Safdie was appointed by Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority to design a museum at Yad Vashem devoted to the 1.5 million children who were murdered in the Holocaust…
A Jew in Germany
David is best known for painting with encaustic, a combination of beeswax and pigment. A Jew in Germany was painted with encaustic on wood. David often uses religious iconography in his works. In 1979…