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.
Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza, the Portuguese-Jewish philosopher considered one of the most important thinkers of the early modern period, served as a “countercultural” icon for many Jewish artists and intellectuals…
Train-Shaped Besamim Box
In Jewish tradition, the end of the Sabbath (or a festival) is marked by the ceremony of Havdalah, which includes the ritual smelling of spices (besomim). Many Jewish cultures approached the box…
Moses’ Death
Mendes da Costa was best known for the reliefs he sculpted for buildings in Amsterdam (many of which were figures of animals) in the style of the Niewe Kunst, the Dutch variant of Art Nouveau. But he…
The Queen of Sheba
On the Lord’s hills, white with lustrous light,
Far from rich palaces reeking of wine,
Drunk on the night and sidereal sadness,
The King dreams in self-imposed exile.
Below, mid the wheat, the…
For Mother
Mother, there’s a tedium today,
some sadness that’s got into everything,
even an ambitious man’s dreams
show signs of a slow despair.
Mother, try loving
your self-despising son
on a day he’s alone
an…
My Astarte
My Astarte, won’t you tell me: from where
Did you come to us in this valley? Was it in the hand of a merchant (Canaanite) of Sidon
From [the] city stronghold of the sea, through waves of agate…
Message Number 7B, Ecclesiastes VII: 6
Mathias Goeritz began his Messages series in the late 1950s and continued adding to it until the end of his career. He set out to create a modernist religious art. Works in the series often referred…
The Grandmother and Her Granddaughter
A big room divided in two by screens. One half represents a bedroom where Odele reclines sadly on a sofa. The other half represents Bontsye’s room: on a table lie a taytsh-khumesh [the Tsene…
Wedding Riddle
This wedding riddle from Italy is written in Hebrew and Judeo-Italian. Wedding songs, sometimes performed by professional jesters, were traditional at Jewish weddings. Some had lyrics in the form of…
A Jewish Tailor
A Jewish Tailor is one of Mark Antokolski’s earliest sculptures, created while he was still a student at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. The work appeared in an era of liberalization of tsarist…
Hasidism Encounters Reform and Produces Anarchism
The chief hypocrite of Russia who sold his soul and his ideas to the Hasidim for the price of 2,000 shekels wrote the following: “If any man says, I am a Jew in accordance with the law of Moses (Mende…
To the Worker Women
Laboring women, suffering women
Women who languish in factory and home—
Why stand at a distance, why build not our temple
Of humanity’s joy, and of freedom sublime?
Help us to bear the red banner…