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.
Lazar Brodsky Choral Synagogue
The Lazar Brodsky Choral Synagogue is built in the Romanesque revival style, with elements of Moorish revival. It is known as the Brodsky Choral Synagogue because it was built on the estate of the…
Rally in Memory of Fallen Worker Kagan
Members of the Bund (General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia), Po‘ale Tsiyon, the Socialist-Zionist party, and Jewish trade unions, along with representatives of the Russian…
Forverts Excursion and Raffle
The heading of this advertisement for an “excursion” offered by the Yiddish daily newspaper Forverts reads: “From where are you a landsman?” (i.e., What town did you come from in the old county?). It…
Unemployed Yiddish Writers
The writers of the radical press (also) have the full right to life, to be free, and to seek their fortune in—a bread line.
Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars
Sheet music for “Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars,” a comic song about a Jewish businessman on his deathbed trying to collect money owed him. “Yiddish dialect songs” were popular performance pieces…
Thieves
This scene is from the 1917 Vilna Troupe production of Fishl Bimko’s Ganovim (Robbers), featuring, from left to right, Morris Tarlov, Avrom Teytlboym, Herts Grosbard, Luba Kadison, and Noyekh Nakhbush…
Tevye the Dairyman
Well, no sooner had I thought of my Hodl than she appeared by my side. She sat down next to me on the stoop, looked around, and said in a low voice, “Papa, are you listening? I have to tell you…
The Jewish Gauchos
Weep and wail, O daughters of Zion!
The women were meeting in Don Moisés’ house to recite the lamentations required by ritual. These were the days set aside to recall the loss…
I Believe
Laugh, laugh at all the dreams
I, the dreamer, declare them too.
Laugh that I have faith in mankind
And I still believe in you.
For my soul still yearns for freedom
I have not sold it for a calf of…
On the Roads of Siberia
On the roads of Siberia
Someone may still uncover a button, a lace
Of my torn shoe,
A leather belt, a shard of a clay mug,
A page of the holy book.
On the rivers of Siberia
Someone may still…
Archaic Jewish Wedding Rituals
VII.
The Marshalek.—His Duties.—The Serenade.—At The Bride’s “Main Quarters.”—The Reception at the Groom’s.—The Ritual of Seating of the Bride.—The Marshalek’s Improvisation.
The rituals and…
Mărculeşti Colony Correspondence (on the New Train Station)
Like most of the other colonies established in Bessarabia in the previous century, the colony went through a long sleepy period. Most of the farmers lived simple bucolic lives. In the summer, they…