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.
Interior of the Synagogue in Fürth
This print depicting a service in the synagogue in Fürth is from the beginning of the eighteenth century, a period of prosperity for the city’s Jewish community. There were between 350 and 400 Jewish…
Cemetery (Altona)
The Jewish cemetery of Altona is made up of two separate cemeteries, one Sephardic (established in 1611 and later expanded several times) and one Ashkenazic (1616, also later expanded). In the…
Rema Synagogue (Kraków)
The Rema Synagogue, named after the famous rabbi and scholar Moses Isserles (known by the Hebrew acronym “Rema”), was built in 1553 in the city of Kazimierz (today a district of Kraków). It was…
Chodorów Synagogue (Poland)
The wooden synagogue in Chodorów, near Lvov, Poland (now Khodoriv, near Lviv, Ukraine), built in 1652, was destroyed by the Nazis. The austere outside—shown here in an early twentieth-century, black…
The Runaway Latkes
Illustrations from Leslie Kimmelman’s children’s book, The Runaway Latkes, illustrated by Paul Yalowitz. This Hanukkah story describes latkes that come to life and escape their oily fate.
Megilat evah (Scroll of Enmity)
I had been living in tranquility in my home, refreshed in my sanctuary, my palace, in the holy congregation of Prague for some twenty-eight years after they had chosen me from the assembly to be a…
Testament (Skopje)
Whereas it is true and certain that the Lady Simcha—may she be blessed above women in the tent—daughter of the honorable and exalted R. Hefetz Conforte—may his soul repose in Paradise—summoned us, the…
Takkanot (Regulations)
The heads of the Communities have gathered here at Frankfort at the order of our masters, the Sages of Germany, to sit in council and look into the needs of the community and to make such ordinances…
Acordos (Regulations)
There may not be in this [city of] Recife and Antonio Vaz any congregation beyond that which exists today—may God enlarge it—and, if there be now or at any time anyone who contests this matter, the…
Letter to the Community of ‘Akron (Kurdistan)
Blessed are you to God . . . You the holy congregation of ‘Akron, may your Rock and Creator preserve you; inform us about your concerns and tell us about your happenings, for I and the Minister, the…
Statutes
- No one shall seek permission to become a master, unless he has it in writing from the Jewish Elders of Prague that he is native of the place, and he shall previously furnish the Jewish Elders with a…
Confusión de Confusiones (Confusion of Confusions)
Philosopher:
I think I have fully grasped usque ad ultimas differentias the meaning of the Company, its shares, its principles, its reputation, its splendor, its initiation, its progress, its…