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.
Front Cover Illustration for Hans Christian Anderson’s Finf arbeslakh (Five peas)
The Russian Revolution initially brought new freedom for Jewish writers and artists. The new regime lifted restrictions on Jewish publishing, sparking a burst of creativity. In 1918, a group of…
Night of Meron
Gidal began his career as a photographer at a time when the invention of lightweight cameras enabled a more spontaneous type of documentary photography. Photographers could now double as journalists…
Land Is Life
Alfons Himmelreich created Land is Life as a cover for the May 1940 issue of the magazine A Land in Construction, a publication of the Jewish National Fund. He accepted the commission as an act of…
Hashomer Hatzair Poster to Honor the 30th Anniversary of the October Revolution
This poster in honor of the thirtieth anniversary of the October revolution of 1917 in Russia calls on all who seek peace, progress, and socialism to support the “first workers’ state,” the Soviet…
In the Ma‘abarah
Ruth Schloss’s artworks were infused with her commitment to social justice and egalitarianism. This painting of a ma‘abarah (refugee absorption camp), made at a time when the new State of Israel was…
A Caravan in the Desert (Right and Left)
To the right and left, just sand and sand,
yellow desert without a path.
A caravan passes, moving silently,
like a dream there, so strange.
The tinkling of bells rises and falls rhythmically.
Cam…
“Let My People Go” poster
This poster of the Soviet Jewry movement, which, from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s fought for the right of Jews to emigrate from the Soviet Union, uses a hammer and sickle, a symbol of communism…
My First Encounter with Peretz
[The writings of the nineteenth-century maskilic writers] Perets Smolenskin and Yitsḥok Erter opened cracks in the faith of Hasidic young men [like Asch himself]. Their life of [Talmud] study without…
Cup and Saucer
This cup and saucer set features a portrait of Jewish German banker Isaac Daniel Itzig and a picture of one of his homes in Berlin, the Bartholdy Meierei (Bartholdi dairy) on Köpenickerstrasse…
The Voice of Gladness
I have merited to make this book, which I named Kol sasson [The Voice of Gladness], for the reason that our masters of blessed memory said that it is obligatory for everyone…
Sermon of the Fast of Av (Synagogue of Amsterdam)
Edouard Brandon’s painting of Amsterdam’s famous Portuguese Synagogue (1675) is set on the Ninth of Av, a fast day commemorating and mourning the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Members of the…
From Volozhin to Jerusalem
Even in the past, some thirty to forty years ago, when Jewish life in Russia was still very conservative, there was a difference between those cities and towns located…