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.
Tombstone of Isaac ben Hayyim
This tombstone of Isaac ben Ḥayim, who died in 1728, includes (at the top) a pair of deer and a pair of lions, animal carvings that often appeared on Jewish tombstones in Eastern Europe. They…
Ark and Two Cathedrae
This wooden Torah ark and its two cathedrae (chairs), from the Scuola Grande Synagogue in Mantua, Italy, date from 1543. Decorated with gilt carvings and architectural elements, they were meant to…
Tombstone (Rome)
This tombstone of Abraham Roccas (d. 1587) is located in the Cloister of the Papal Archbasilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, in Rome, Italy.
Toledot Adam (The Generations of Adam)
This two-page spread from Elijah ben Moses Loanz’s Toledot Adam (The Generations of Adam) includes examples of some of the kabbalistic amulets and formulae for which he was famous.
Rabbinic Ordination Certificate
This rabbinic ordination certificate granted to Judah ben Eliezer Briel was printed as a broadside in Venice and signed by prominent Venetian rabbis. It certifies his learning and his fitness to…
Sephardic Synagogue (Pesaro, Italy)
Home to a Jewish community from at least the thirteenth century, Pesaro later became the refuge of Portuguese and Spanish Jews in the sixteenth century. In 1642, a few years after the town’s Jews were…
Private Synagogue (Unterlimpurg, Germany)
This synagogue structure contains stunning samples of wood painting and folk motifs (including verses, images of Jerusalem, animals, and flowers). The panels were decorated by Eliezer Zusman, an…
Book of Prayers for the Gravediggers Society
This illustration from a book of prayers for the Jewish Gravediggers Society depicts the cycle of life. Figures of men and women in pairs ascend and descend the staircase, progressing from youth to…
Letter Hailing Shabbetai Tzvi as the Messiah
This letter hailing Shabbetai Tzvi as the Messiah was signed by twenty-four prominent members of the Amsterdam Jewish community who had founded a learned society, Yeshuot Meshiho, in his honor. It was…
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC
Freed deliberately designed the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to create a sense of disorientation and alienation, even terror, in keeping with the museum’s subject matter. Though it is not based on a…
Library, August Bebel Square, Berlin
Library is a site in August Bebel Square in Berlin, built on the spot where, in May 1933, thousands of Nazi sympathizers erected a bonfire and burned more than twenty thousand “decadent” books. A pane…
Berlin Jewish Museum, Berlin, Germany
Liebeskind’s design for a new extension to the Berlin Jewish Museum was the winner of a 1989 competition and was the first of his designs to be built. Its zigzagging shape was intended to evoke the…