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.
Book Acquisitions of the ‘Ets Haim Yeshiva for the Years 1718/9 and 1732/33
Established in 1616 as part of a yeshiva in Amsterdam, the Ets Ḥayim library continues to function to this day, making it the oldest operational Jewish library in the world. It moved to its current…
Portrait of David Nieto
This portrait of David Nieto was printed by James McArdell after a painting by David Esteves, London. David Nieto studied medicine in Padua and initially served as physician, preacher, and rabbinic…
Jewish woman in Cairo
This engraving depicting a Jewish woman in Cairo, Egypt, is from Cornelis de Bruyn’s travelogue, Reizen van Corn de Bruyn door de vermaardste deelen van Klein Asia, de eylanden Scio, Rhodus, Cyprus…
Untitled, 1996 (from The Soldiers Series)
This photograph of a bare-chested young man flexing his muscles in front of an army tent is one of the best-known images in Nes’s “Soldiers” series, an exploration of Israeli identity and masculinity…
Safed Exorcism
I was in the midst of a large group of people who were there, close to a hundred people, among them scholars and heads of communities. And two men, who knew adjurations and many things, approached the…
Sifte yeshenim (Lips of the Sleepers): On Citing Authors
I am astonished to see that for reading just the names of the holy books, one receives his reward, as if he had read and studied them all. If so, then one will not make much of an effort to study…
Tet/Nine
The one who whispers in automobiles
Causes streetlamps to tremble with thanksgiving as he kneels
And brings their harsh hauteur low as they boast
At the hour of perfect darkness
At the height of the…
Ivory or Bone Spoon
The image on the handle of this spoon from Beth Zur is of a person in a ceremonial pose with one arm raised. The lotus blossom on the left reinforces Egyptian iconographic connections. Part of the…
Silver Earrings
These silver earrings of solid lunates have fixed attachments and attachments of hollow granule clusters. They are from a tomb at Tel Ira in the northern Negev.
Ahab and Jezebel, Elijah and Elisha
Ahab son of Omri became king over Israel in the thirty-eighth year of King Asa of Judah, and Ahab son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria for twenty-two years. Ahab…
Nehemiah’s Prayer
The narrative of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah:
In the month of Kislev of the twentieth year, when I was in the fortress of Shushan, Hanani, one of my brothers, together with some men of Judah, arrived…
Jeremiah Speaks at the Temple
The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord: Stand at the gate of the House of the Lord, and there proclaim this word: Hear the word of the Lord, all you of Judah who enter these gates to worship…