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 Inscriptions (Istanbul)
Mikri (“little one”) Wife of Yehuda Hamon (d. 1642)
Yesterday I was playing on the earth, in my husband’s embrace, like a tiny lamb, And an angel came and preyed upon me in his wrath…
Halakhic Query to David Oppenheim
The incident was as follows: A woman came before me from a backwater Jewish town weeping bitterly over the sins of her youth, as she had been unfaithful to her first husband before she married her…
Founding Charter
In the year five thousand three hundred twenty-four [1564] of the Creation of the World, when we are returned to the houses of our fathers from the four corners of the world. After the expulsion in…
Inscription from K’ai-fêng Fu
Concerning the origin of the religion of Israel [Yi-tz’ u-lo-yeh], it has come from a distant past.
It began with Adam [A-tan], who was a descendant of P’an-ku in the nineteenth generation, and it was…
Colophon: Tefilah le-Moshe (Prayer of Moses)
I set the Yiddish letters with my own hands.
Elle, daughter of the respected rabbi Moses from Holland.
I am not more than nine years old.
Among six children I am the only daughter.
Therefore, if you…
Medicus politicus (The Physician for the Public Good)
So, to begin in the manner now accepted, in which (by scholarly consensus) the practice is to lay one…
Takkanot (Regulations)
Considering the great harm and dangers that have befallen the religious communities of Israel on account of overdressing both by women and by young men, we, the undersigned honorable parnasim…
Ner mitsvah (Light of the Commandment): On Hanukkah
And this, too, must be said, that the main reason for establishing the days of Hanukkah is because they [the Jews] were victorious over the Greeks. However, it did not appear that the victory was…
Neḥmad ve-na‘im (Nice and Pleasant)
Nicolaus Copernicus, from [Polish] Prussia, was a great man, who was more proficient in the field of astronomy than all the wise men of his age. Indeed, all the wise men of our time unanimously attest…