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.
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…
The Ancient People of Israel
I.
This book will discuss the people of Israel (the name by which the Jewish people were known), showing the history of their joys and…
The Jewish Economy
When we speak about the economy of a given nation, about the German, French, or Polish economies, we don’t mean the economic lives of all the people belonging, according to their race, language…
The Israel Passover Haggadah
To Section I, which deals with the Haggadah itself, I have added six other sections.
Section II, entitled “Moses, our Teacher,” is a collation of midrashim, which discuss his attributes…
Igeret aliyat ha-neshamah (Epistle on the Ascent of the Soul)
You will assuredly regard it as wondrous, and it will gladden your heart that I too regarded as wondrous the vision vouchsafed to me by the Almighty in relation to the aliyot “ascents”—wondrous things…
A Polish Jew
This depiction of a Polish Jew first appeared in a book, Neu-eröffnete Welt-Galleria (New Gallery of the World), published in Nuremberg in 1703. Its 101 plates by Caspar Luyken included portraits of…