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.
A Lovely Song about an Event in Hamburg
Which tells how a certain man took up with a prostitute in Hamburg, his first wife hearing of this came from Poland, how he was forced to give her a writ of divorce and this almost cost him his life…
Couplets of Joseph the Righteous
“It is only because the Lord was with us,”
says the old Israel;
in You lies holiness,
Israel’s praises.
“It is only because the Lord was with us,”
You elevated us above other men,
You saved us from…
Introduction: Salamone de Rossi’s Ha-shirim asher li-Shelomoh (The Songs of Solomon)
May the language of truth be established forever, or as the poet …
Counting the Omer
Leiba recognized that Fraydel was in danger of disappearing down the well of her own thoughts.
Fraydel was a secret keeping herself from the world. When she spoke, it was yet another way of keeping…
The Dybbuk
Lights up on Judith.The rest of the company have their backs to the audience. They are dressed in 1940s costumes. She is dressed in today’s casual clothes.Judith:I was in Germany and they went on…
Paradise Lost: Emigration: An Attempt at a Self-Portrait
There is nothing more terrible than dreams come true. […]
The first streets of New York. Primitive prefab apartment houses. Fire escapes down the front. The capital of the world is immediately…
Who Are Today’s Modern Orthodox?
Poor Blu Greenberg, has she let herself in for it. In seeking to effect a synthesis between Orthodoxy and feminism in On Women and Judaism, she has managed to anger partisans on both sides of the…
Brit Ahuvim: A Lovers’ Covenant
Kinyan, or symbolic acquisition of the partnership, is the third traditional element of partnership law embodied in the b’rit ahuvim, and it is fraught with…
Yemenite Jew
Struck taught at the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, where Yemenite Jews were popular subjects. Many new Jewish arrivals in Palestine, interested in creating a Jewish cultural revival, viewed…
Alphabet of Creation
This calligraphic print appears in Ben Shahn’s book Alphabet of Creation, based on a tale about how God created the world through the letters of the Hebrew alphabet taken from the Zohar, a thirteenth…
Portrait of Heinrich Heine
A German romantic poet and essayist, Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) was born in Düsseldorf. Unsuccessful in his early business career, he studied law, and settled in Berlin in 1821. There he met with…
Torah Ark Curtain (Gördes)
This Torah ark curtain from Gördes, Turkey, features an archway flanked on either side with double columns and a hanging lamp, a motif common to both Islamic prayer rugs and mats and Ottoman Torah ark…