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.
The Valley of Demons
Those matters discussed in an earlier issue dedicated to the practice of indolka inspired the distinguished writer to write this fine article.
Everything that I am relating here is neither eloquent…
Jar with Governor of the City Inscription
To/of the governor of the city. Translated by Shmuel Aḥituv, Ze’ev Meshel, and Esther Eshel.
The Sins of My Youth
There are two sorts of biography: the biography a famous person writes for his admirers, because the public likes to know everything about celebrities, and [the] autobiography, usually written because…
Lamelekh Seal Impression with Winged Sun Disk
Many of the seal impressions, with the inscription lamelekh “(Belonging, or pertaining) to the king,” followed by the name of a city, feature a two-winged figure, probably a winged sun disk…
Touro Synagogue
The Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, is home to the second-oldest congregation in the United States. As Sephardic Jews began emigrating from the Caribbean to colonial America in the…
Livro de ascamot (Book of Regulations): On Non-Jews in Synagogue
No one may accommodate non-Jews [in the synagogue] without the permission of the mahamad [board of governors].
In the past, it was promulgated that no person may get up from his place to go to greet…
Testament (Verona)
We, the undersigned, came in to visit the honorable lady Rosa Romanina, widow of R. Moses Guastalla of blessed memory, a resident of Rivarolo, and found her sick, lying on her bed, but her words and…
Ma’amar ‘olam katan (Treatise on the Microcosm)
Let the entire soul praise the Lord (Psalms 150:6) concerning the four quarters of the component of the souls that approach the Lord; and they are in detail as follows: the greatest, which…
The Diaspora: Construction of Jewish History
This is the eighteen-hundred-year era of the diaspora, of unprecedented suffering, of uninterrupted martyrdom without parallel in world history. But it is also a period of spiritual alertness, of…
Medical-Critical Letter Written by Doctor Joseph Vita Castelli to His Friend, a Doctor, Regarding a Serious and Complicated Case of Acute Fever
Art, which gives men the means to persevere and cure some sicknesses, seems nowadays to depend on philosophy, which is that great and clear source that produces all that is luminous and useful. I am…
Statement of Mourning
Do you deem me to be hard and evil-hearted in that I should hasten to do a match during my period of mourning? Am I to forget the love of the wife of my youth, my pure dove, whom God graciously gave…
Reenslaving Manumitted Slaves
The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord after King Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem to proclaim a release among them— that everyone should set free his Hebrew…