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.
Gazeta de Amsterdam (Amsterdam Gazette)
The Gazeta de Amsterdam was printed by David de Castro Tartas, in that city, not regularly, from 1672 to 1702. This is considered the first Jewish newspaper, although it has no particular Jewish…
Spanish Edition of David Nieto’s Mateh Dan (The Tribe of Dan)
This is a Spanish edition of David Nieto’s Mateh Dan (The Tribe of Dan). David Nieto’s best-known work constitutes a defense of the oral law and rabbinic tradition, addressed to former New Christians…
Takkanot (Regulations)
These ordinances have been decreed by us on Thursday, the twenty-first of Tammuz, corresponding to the twenty-first of June, of the year 5314 (1554) here at Ferrara.
- Printers shall not be permitted to…
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…
Sefer yitnu (Book of “They Shall Offer”)
It is known that one who lacks books lacks knowledge, for a man’s knowledge is limited in its reach by the reach of his books; and there is no artist without tools. Many new books came…
Dod Mordekhay (Uncle of Mordechai)
Before we write the answers to the wise man’s questions we will cite the questions he posed in his writings, so that the answers can be positioned opposite the…
The Book of Israel
God, Robin and me had the funniest time trying to decide. I mean it was bizarre. I suppose we had always assumed we would do it, but then, well, when you actually think…
In a Nutshell
Credo in a kind of
American jewish Hamlet-like
bagel, too round for action
yet leavened enough by contact
with the near-dead past—you call it
landscape, I call it history—to provide
a layered vantage…
Germans, Journals, and Jews/Madison, Men, Marxism and Mosse: A Tale of Jewish-Leftist Identity Confusion in America
[…] the Madison Left experience, at least in the early and mid-1960s, was never simply an American experience. It was more jumbled, at least more composite—like America itself? In my own not untypical…
Modern Trends in Orthodoxy
Diversity is a characteristic feature of Orthodoxy today. Orthodox leaders and movements inspire the extremes of the Jewish political spectrum, from the supernationalism of Meir Kahane…