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 Rise of David Levinsky
Sometimes, when I think of my past in a superficial, casual way, the metamorphosis I have gone through strikes me as nothing short of a miracle. I was born and…
Monish
Life is like a river;we are fish.The water’s wholesome and freshand we would swim forever,but for a black figureon the riverbank.There Satan stands,in his handsa fishing rod,and catches fish.With a…
Stained-Glass Window, Central Synagogue, Portland Street, London
When the Central Synagogue was built on the site of London’s first Ashkenazic synagogue, which had been destroyed by bombing in World War II, David Hillman was commissioned to create twenty-six…
Jewish London
A hundred thousand men, women, and children, some of them fugitives still suffering the punishment of Cain, others just sloughing the Ghetto skin, yet others in whose ears the “hep, hep” of the…
Marriage and Migration: Trials of a Jewish Immigrant in Cuba
December 6, 1913, Havana
To his Eminence Monsieur Haim Nahum, Chief Rabbi of Turkey [Ottoman Empire], Constantinople [Istanbul].
Monsieur Rabbi,
I have the honor of bringing the following facts to…
Lavater and Lessing Visit Moses Mendelssohn, 1856
This painting portrays an imagined meeting of Jewish scholar Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781), and the Swiss theologian Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801)…
From Ancient Times
When one comes to collect legends of the Hebrews and Jews from the many diverse strata of our literature, one must be armed with all the secrets of the schools and fruits of visionary…
The Music Room of Fanny Hensel
Fanny Hensel (1805–1847), the granddaughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and financier Daniel Itzig, and sister of the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, was born in Hamburg into a wealthy…
Medal with the Image of Judith and Moses Montefiore
This medal by master engraver Charles Wiener honors the Jewish philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1885) and his wife, Lady Judith Montefiore (1784–1862). Montefiore was an activist on behalf of…
Self-Portrait
Theresa Concordia Mengs painted this self-portrait with pastels, her preferred medium, when she was about twenty years old, a few years after her family moved from Dresden to Rome.
The Death of Moses
The object of this publication, an Ethiopian text, is taken from a book of Falasha prayers which I acquired from Dabtarà Bàrok, a Jewish man of letters, in Adenkato. It contains the…
Robert le diable
Robert le diable (Robert the Devil) is an opera in five acts composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer between 1827 and 1831. One of the first grand operas, it caused a sensation when it debuted at the Paris…