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.
Portrait of Fanny von Arnstein
Fanny von Arnstein (née Itzig; 1758–1818) was born into a prominent Jewish banking family in Berlin and married a leading Viennese financier. She entertained many luminaries at her famous salon. Having…
Tańczący chasydzi (Dancing Hasidim), ca. 1875
Sympathetic or even neutral artistic depictions of Hasidic Jews in the nineteenth century are rare. This sketch of Hasidic Jews dancing is one example. Hasidism is known for ecstatic prayer, and…
Hanukkah Lamp
The master silversmith Rötger Herfurth was particularly well known for his Hanukkah lamps, most of which have backplates and rampant lions, a style he popularized and which came to be known as the…
Torah Binder
This Torah binder, made for boys at birth and later brought by young men as a symbol of participation in the synagogue, illustrates the fixed nature of traditional gender expectations.
Portrait of Wakara
Solomon Nunes Carvalho painted this portrait of Wakara (ca. 1808–1855) of the Timpanogos tribe (later chief of the Utah Indians) after returning from a trip to the territories of Kansas, Colorado, and…
Fate of the Jewish People
The educated Englishman can live his entire life without ever once giving a moment’s thought to his people’s historical destiny or purpose. He knows instinctively that his people are alive and intact…
Heinrich Heine
[ . . . ] The Judaism into which Heine was born and with which he had to come to terms as a maturing man was the Judaism of the German reform. This was, to be sure, no longer the reform, creative in…
Female Figures in the Bund
Women have always played a noticeable role in the Bund movement. Even at the dawn of the Jewish labor movement they were distinguished by their number and activity. The mass movement in Vilna began…
My Life as German and Jew
I was born and raised in Fuerth, a predominantly Protestant manufacturing city of Middle Franconia, with a large Jewish community consisting principally of artisans and tradesmen. The Jews formed…
Memories
I.
I must revive the experiences of the revolutionary path traversed in order to share memories and knowledge with workers and the younger generation. They want and need to have an…
The Pogroms in the Ukraine in 1918–21
Much has been written concerning the pogroms of Jews in the Ukraine in 1918–21. Countless reports of the atrocities perpetrated by the bandits in various cities and towns were published in the Jewish…
Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors
In a phrase of Hermann Cohen, Maimonides is the “classic of rationalism” in Judaism. This phrase appears to us to be correct in a stricter sense than Cohen may have intended: Maimonides’…