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.
Maḥzor for the Rite of Carpentras
This maḥzor (holiday prayer book) contains the festival prayers for the whole year, according to the rite of Carpentras, and was copied in Provence. The Jews of the former papal territory of Comtat…
Minhage de-kehilah ha-kedoshah Vormaiza (Customs of the Holy Community of Worms): On Purim
At the beginning of Purim, after evening prayer near the time when it gets dark, the charity warden brings with him an assortment of candles that are painted and nice looking, and he…
Seder nashim (Order of Women): On Welcoming the Sabbath
Near sunset one shall light a Shabbat candle and before saying the blessing it is necessary to say “I am not receiving Shabbat” even if one already lit it, until it is Shabbat.
And then…
Yosef omets (He Will Be Stronger): On Going to the Synagogue
[ . . . ] 5. When one wishes to go to the synagogue, he should say, “I will go to the synagogue for the sake of the unification of the presence of the Holy One and to raise it from its fall,” as…
Testament (Jamaica)
In the name of God, Amen.
I Moses Cohen DeLara of the parish of Kingston in the Island of Jamaica aforesaid Merchant being sick in Body but of Sound memory and…
Ayn naye kornayk (A New Chronicle)
[1742] In the week when we read the portion Toledoth of the Pentateuch a proclamation was issued by the…
Dofi ha-zeman (Chastisements of the Times)
May the Almighty make His vaporous dew fall, for the benefit of His people and His servants, and may He, in His mercy, restore the souls to the deceased. Let him who understands hear, and let him who…
Shemen ha-tov u-zekan Aharon (The Goodly Oil and the Beard of Aaron)
There was once a little city with few Jewish inhabitants, roughly twenty households, the name [of the city] being Ragusa; and it was self-governing. Now it transpired that in the year 5383 [1622], on…
Shevaḥ nashim (In Praise of Women)
I have realized, and my attention has been drawn to the fact that many people say that the salvation of women is not on the same level as that of men, for their [women’s] knowledge is limited. They…
Jar with Governor of the City Inscription
To/of the governor of the city. Translated by Shmuel Aḥituv, Ze’ev Meshel, and Esther Eshel.
Ma’amar ‘olam katan (Treatise on the Microcosm)
Let the entire soul praise the Lord (Psalms 150:6) concerning the four quarters of the component of the souls that approach the Lord; and they are in detail as follows: the greatest, which…
The Diaspora: Construction of Jewish History
This is the eighteen-hundred-year era of the diaspora, of unprecedented suffering, of uninterrupted martyrdom without parallel in world history. But it is also a period of spiritual alertness, of…