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.
Five Years of My Life
V.
The degradation took place Saturday, the 5th of January. I underwent the horrible torture without weakness.
Before the ceremony, I waited for an hour in the hall of the garrison…
The Heder in Lithuania
The resolution of the heder commission and the OPE [The Society for the Promotion of Culture Among the Jews of Russia] Committee indicates that our task went far beyond the limits of a…
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)…
Zekhut Yisra’el (The Merit of Israel)
A. Many great, wise, genius, and righteous men beseeched me to publish in a book that which I received from scribes and…
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.
Letter to Alfred Michaux
Dear Sir,
You ask me to write extensively about my life. As far as I can, I will gladly do so, but, unfortunately, I won’t be able to do all that much. Here are the reasons: maybe for future…
Truth from the Land of Israel
What more can I add? Will I tell my readers about the disreputable attributes that prevail among those coming from exile, about gratuitous hatred, discord, vain squabbles over a place in the synagogue…
Letter to Herzl from Egypt’s First Zionist Society
“Bar Kokhba” Jewish SocietyCairo, EgyptFounded the 1st of Adar I 5657February 1897Central HeadquartersMr. Theodor HerzlEditor of the “Neue Freie Presse”ViennaSir, dear coreligionist in your Jewish…
Altneuland (Old-New Land)
“One question, Reschid Bey,” interrupted Kingscourt. “These gentlemen will pardon me, but you are much too modest. Were not the older inhabitants of Palestine ruined by the Jewish immigration? And…