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.
Where Can Wisdom be Found?
There is a mine for silver,
And a place where gold is refined.
Iron is taken out of the earth,
And copper smelted from rock.
He sets bounds for darkness;
To every limit man probes,
To rocks in…
Moses Blesses the Tribes
This is the blessing with which Moses, the man of God, bade the Israelites farewell before he died. He said:
The Lord came from Sinai;
He shone upon them from Seir;
He appeared from Mount Paran,
An…
An Order Concerning Supplies and a Reference to the Temple of YHWH
To my lord Elyashib: May YHWH seek your welfare! And now, give to Shemaryahu an x-measure and to the Kerosite give a y-measure. And as for the matter which you commanded me, it is well. He (it?) is…
Dream Report
Now, lo, I saw a dream and since then I am very feverish. May Iahmoliah attend to my welfare.
Now, if you wish, do not sell them. Let the children eat them. Lo, there do not remain any cucumbers.
Tran…
A Shipment of Gold
Gold of Ophir to/of Beth Horon. 30 shekels.
Translated by Anson F. Rainey from Shmuel Aḥituv’s Hebrew edition.
Shalmaneser III, Kurkh Monolith
In the eponymate of Dayan-Ashur, on the 14th of Aiaru (Iyyar), I set out from Nineveh . . .
I set out from the Euphrates and approached Aleppo. They (i.e., the inhabitants of Aleppo) were afraid of…
The Day of Atonement
In 1919, when Kramer painted The Day of Atonement, modernist art depicting Jewish rituals was considered new and radical, especially in tradition-bound England. When the Jewish community of Leeds…
Dos naye lebn (cover)
Dos naye lebn (New Life) was a Yiddish literary and political monthly founded and edited by Chaim Zhitlowsky and published in New York. Among the topics debated in its pages was the question of…
Of the High Priest’s Tribe
An important Jewish genre painter, Kaufman drew inspiration for his romantic depictions of traditional Jewish life from trips to Moravia and Upper Hungary, Galicia and Bukovina and areas of 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…
Barnett Freedman
Rothenstein was one of the best-known and most prolific British portraitists of the first half of the twentieth century. His style confounds easy characterization. He considered himself both a…
Unemployed Yiddish Writers
Cartoon from Der groyser kundes showing well-known Yiddish authors and editors, such as Zalmon Libin (third from left, 1872-1955) and Moshe Katz (second from left, 1864–1941), waiting in a bread line…