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.
Letter of Rabbinic Appointment to the City of Posen
When the leaders of the people were assembled, all the tribes of Israel together, on the evening of the twenty-first day of Adar 5572, to oversee the affairs of the general community and the needs of…
The Love of Zion
Azrikam grew in his father’s house like a thorn, becoming uglier as he grew. Tamar, however, grew more beautiful day by day. The contrast between these two children was not only noticeable in their…
Introduction to the Commentary on Numbers—Me’am Lo’ez
The introduction to the first volume of this work, which you already have, explains that one must know what mitzvot God commanded us to perform, and what he obliged us to avoid, to find…
Portrait of Menasseh Ben Israel
This engraving of famed intellectual Menasseh ben Israel, made by Shalom Italia, is one of the earliest known portraits of a Jewish thinker by a Jewish artist. Italia highlights Menasseh's scholarly…
The Mikve Israel-Emanuel Synagogue, Entrance
Mikve Israel-Emanuel is a synagogue that served the Spanish Portuguese Jewish community in Curaçao (and continues to function today as a Reconstructionist congregation). It is the oldest surviving…
Moses Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed
This edition of Moses Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed was printed in Sabbioneta, Italy by Cornelio Adelkind for Tobias Foà. The twelfth-century work was an attempt to reconcile Aristotelianism with…
Text of an Excommunication
This text of an excommunication, found in David Aboab’s manuscript of Sefer emet ve-yatsiv (True and Certain), chronicles a conflict in the Sephardic congregation of Curaçao. The first Jews arrived in…
Narraçāo da vinda dos Judeos espanhões a Amsterdam (Account of the Coming of the Spanish Jews to Amsterdam)
The illustrious gentlemen, ḥakham R. Mosseh Ury ha-Levi (of blessed memory) and his son, R. Aaron Ury ha-Levi, my father and master: both were residents of Emden, in the province of Oost-Friesland…
Responsum: On a Reluctant Bridegroom
There was a certain man in our country who had become totally impoverished, and who had betrothed his elder daughter to her appropriate mate. During the period of her betrothal—the date fixed for…
Amulet for a Newborn Boy
This printed amulet, from Germany, was made for infant boys. The amulet has a companion, for a girl child (see “Amulet for a Newborn Girl”). The text in the center of the amulet is surrounded by a…
Colophon: Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah
And we, in our humble opinion, state that it was done well, although the labor was very great, and it ran very quickly, and according to our sharpness of wit at that time we examined it well, for we…
Sefer ha-zikuk (The Book of Expurgation)
1. Whenever the term idolaters appears, and it is not clearly referring…