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.
Haggadah (Prague)
This Haggadah from Prague, printed by Gershom and Grunim Katz with illustrations that are thought to be by Ḥayyim ben David Shaḥor, is one of the earliest Haggadahs ever printed. It was the first…
Ketubah (Amsterdam)
In 1654, Rahel bat Hannah Rovigo married Isaac ben Abraham de Pinto, a member of a prosperous Jewish family of merchant bankers in Amsterdam. The ketubah (marriage contract), which outlines the…
A Ruling on the Printing of the Zohar
The earth made noise as did the heavens, and the doorposts are shaking at the voice crying out that it would be wrong to publish hidden and sealed materials and to break through the fence established…
Livro de ascamot (Book of Regulations): On a Banned Book
In meetings of the community’s Mahamad [board of governors], past and present, discussions were held about a book that Gideon [Abudiente] ordered printed concerning the…
Kaddish for a Child Not Born
A Holocaust survivor grapples with the question: should one bring children into the world after experiencing the horrors of the death camps?
The Rabbi in the Attic
[…] What rabbi would come to this impoverished nowhere for the pishochs we offered, especially if he had to rent his own lodgings—the congregation had no money for an apartment when a perfectly good…
The Dybbuk
Lights up on Judith.The rest of the company have their backs to the audience. They are dressed in 1940s costumes. She is dressed in today’s casual clothes.Judith:I was in Germany and they went on…
Paradise Lost: Emigration: An Attempt at a Self-Portrait
There is nothing more terrible than dreams come true. […]
The first streets of New York. Primitive prefab apartment houses. Fire escapes down the front. The capital of the world is immediately…
Who Are Today’s Modern Orthodox?
Poor Blu Greenberg, has she let herself in for it. In seeking to effect a synthesis between Orthodoxy and feminism in On Women and Judaism, she has managed to anger partisans on both sides of the…
Brit Ahuvim: A Lovers’ Covenant
Kinyan, or symbolic acquisition of the partnership, is the third traditional element of partnership law embodied in the b’rit ahuvim, and it is fraught with…
Sargon II, Calah Summary Inscription
The Samarians, who had come to an agreement with a [hostile (?)] king not to do service or to render tribute to me, did battle. In the strength of the great gods, my lords, I fought with them; I…
Cover of Albatros, No. 3
Albatros, a journal of literature and graphic art, debuted in Warsaw in 1922 and published its final two issues in Berlin. The journal was edited by the Hebrew-Yiddish poet Uri Zvi Greenberg and…