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.
On Brutal Soldiers and Children
How shall I bless him and what will this child be blessed with? asked the angel. Life—so it emerges from the song lyric—was among the options of the angel’s blessing. But after all, angels don’t exist…
Jeremiah’s Letter to the Jewish Exiles in Babylonia
This is the text of the letter which the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the priests, the prophets, the rest of the elders of the exile community, and to all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar…
Passover Letter
To my brothers Jedaniah and his colleagues the Jewish Troop, your brother Hananiah.May the gods seek the welfare of my brothers at all times.And now, this year, year 5 of Darius the king, word has…
Synagogue of the Old Cemetery of Lemberg (L'viv) (Reconstruction)
Józef Awin’s reconstruction of the synagogue in the Old Cemetery of Lwów/L’viv, featured here, reflects his clean geometricity and appreciation for Galician wooden synagogue architecture. The cemetery…
Mazal Tov Eliyahu Ezra Challah Cover
This beautiful, embroidered challah cover was made in Jerusalem around the year 1890 as a gift of thanks to “the gentlelady Mazal Tov Eliyah Ezra.” It is signed at the bottom by a mother and daughter…
Jehoiachin in Exile
½ (panu) to Jehoiachin, king of Ju[dah]
2 ½ qu to the five sons of the king of Judah
4 qu to 8 Judeans, ½ [qu each]
1 ½ qu to three carpenters from Arvad, ½ qu each
½ panu 1 ½ qu to eight carpenters…
Self-Portrait
Lubin was a member of what is known as the Land of Israel movement, a group of artists who, in the 1920s, drew on the ideas and practices of post-impressionism to create a new modern art of Jewish…
Portrait of Mikhoels
Solomon Mikhoels (1890–1948), a Yiddish actor, director of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater (GOSET), and later chair of the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, was an iconic figure of Soviet Jewish…
Whither?
I see his melancholy profile as though through a mist, through the curtain of thick cloud that descended on him in his lifetime and darkened his bright trail with a multitude of vain fictions and will…
Behind the Fence
One Sabbath eve, as darkness fell, Noah lay hidden among the thorns and thistles growing under the fences outside the quarter and waited. He knew that Marinka would be returning this way from her…