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.
Medal in Honor of the Grand Sanhedrin of Napoleon
Engravers Alexis Joseph Depaulis and Augustin Dupré collaborated on this remarkable Napoleonic-era medal that honored the Grand Sanhedrin, a representative body of seventy-one rabbis and Jewish…
On the Gathering of the Agadah
The written Hebrew agadah [lore and legends transmitted in rabbinic texts] is the primary literary form that was dominant for several centuries in the world of unbounded folk and individual creation…
Dohány Street Synagogue
The Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest is the largest synagogue in Europe, and the second largest in the world, capable of accommodating three thousand people. The Moorish- and Byzantine-inspired…
A Jewish Wedding in South Russia
Of all festivities celebrated among the Jews in southern Russia, the wedding ceremony has suffered the greatest loss of characteristic elements of folk tradition. Even among the poorest, weddings are…
Letter from an Egyptian Jewish Deist on Why He Will Not Convert to Islam
You said, in the beginning of the second page, “The young man then adopted the Muslim religion.” Please omit this because I did not change the faith of my parents, although I respect the three…
Letter to Chaim Weizmann
The Secretary
Zionist Organisation
London
Baghdad, 8th September 1922
Dear Sir,
I have the pleasure to acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 20th July 1922. It is needless to say that I greatly…
Diary Entries
“Consummatum est!” I could exclaim on January 1, 1876.The minister [Jozsef Eötvös] frivolously deceived me. His promise turned out to be a premeditated lie. Scorn and sarcasm were his response when I…
Antigoyism in Zion
As I informed you in yesterday’s cable, hearings on the cause célèbre that is stirring up all of Palestine have begun before the Grand Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.
The issue is really quite…
The Jews and the Fatherland
Dear colleague:
I received your letter asking me to send you clear information about the political situation, notably in regard to the Jewish national movement.
Do you not believe that it is still…
The War for Our Nation
[By “war”] I mean concrete war—rather than a war of words or an incomplete war of demonstrations. I am not in denial regarding the existence of these words or those demonstrations, and neither do I…
On the Art of Painting in General and among Jews in Particular
In recent years, a time when the branches of science planted in the vineyard of the Enlightenment stretch out to our brethren in our land [i.e., the Russian Empire], and many eat their fruit, and many…
Ost und West Editorial Statement
A remarkable transformation is occurring in our days. From the confusion of imported trends that have been crowding Judaism over the past century, an element that has long been overlooked is emerging…