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.
Burial Society Cup
This silver beaker is one of two commissioned by the Burial Society of Worms in the eighteenth century. Beakers were used at the ceremony inducting members into the society at its annual banquet…
Torah Ark Curtain
Made in Prague, this Torah ark curtain is exquisitely ornamented with embroidery of silk, silk velvet, and metallic thread. Set against a vivid red background, its borders and central panel are…
Linen Torah Binder
The Torah binder (also known as a wimpel) was intended to accompany the male child through his lifetime, through the stages of his circumcision, bar mitzvah, and wedding. This linen Torah binder from…
Bomberg Babylonian Talmud
Printing, which Jews adopted immediately after its invention, helped to unify far-flung communities. Where previously Jewish learning had been transmitted through the individual copying of manuscripts…
Illustration of an Armillary Sphere
This illustration of an armillary sphere is from a treatise on astronomy, Sefer mareh ha-ofanim (The Appearance of the Heavenly Beings), by Solomon ben Abraham Avigdor. The treatise was mostly a…
Remembrance
Remembrance was commissioned by Congregation Agudas Achim in Bexley, Ohio. The nine-foot-tall bronze sculpture depicts smoke rising from a crematorium, intertwined with the arm of a survivor…
Benches, Royal Park, Montreal, Canada
Jaffee was best known for his photographs of people and cityscapes. In this photograph of empty benches, seemingly arranged for viewing an unknown event, he saw both an enigma and an abstract…
Memorial
Memorial, like many of Bak’s paintings, evokes the ruins incurred by the Holocaust, in this case symbolized by the shards of shattered Jewish tombstones, possibly hinting at the two tablets of law. A…
The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment
The setting for The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment is modeled on a communal apartment in which Kabakov once lived in Moscow. The walls of the small, shabby space are papered with upbeat…
Razor
Weinfeld, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, produced artworks addressing the question of who she would have been if she had herself been a prisoner in a concentration camp? Would she have been…
Self-Portrait at Buchenwald: It’s the Real Thing
In 1993, Schechner digitally inserted himself into a historical photograph of prisoners in a newly liberated bunker at the Buchenwald concentration camp, taken in 1945 by Margaret Bourke-White. He…
Seder Plate: Untitled
The matzah used to make Goldberg’s reimagined seder plate was purchased from a Hasidic bakery in Brooklyn. Inspired by the prominent role played by the asking of questions in the Haggadah, he met with…