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.
American Splendor
“Standing Behind Old Jewish Ladies in Supermarket Lines” is a comic from Harvey Pekar’s autobiographical comic series American Splendor, which focused on everyday life in Cleveland, Ohio. Not an…
The Shohet (from “Had Gadya”)
The violence of the Passover song “Had Gadya” (“Who Knows One”) clearly spoke to this illustrator’s sense of horror following World War I.
A Book of Hebrew Letters
Pages from Mark Podwal’s A Book of Hebrew Letters, an exploration of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet through drawings and words representing each letter.
Florida Family Portrait
For her book Florida Family Portrait, Gelles photographed her family in the same pose over twenty years during trips to visit her parents in Florida. A comment on family, growth, aging, death, and the…
Tefillin (Triptych)
Laurence’s Tefillin questions both western art and patriarchal aspects of Judaism. The triptych portrays parts of women’s naked bodies, bound in the leather straps of tefillin, the small black leather…
Kabbalistic Diagram and Calendar
These pages come from the same manuscript of a midrashic commentary. The first image depicts the inner processes of the divine emanations (the sefirot). Visualization plays an important part in…
Faces decorating a siddur
These are marginal illustrations found in a manuscript siddur from Italy according to the Romaniote rite, with prayers focused on marriage and birth rituals and customs, as well as the pidyon ha-ben…
Mūsā nāma (The Book of Moses)
Mūsā nāmā (The Book of Moses) is a retelling of the biblical story of Moses, composed in Judeo-Persian verse by the poet Mowlānā Shāhīn-i Shīrāzī. In this scene, Phinehas (bottom right) surprises the…
Megilat Mitsrayim (The Scroll of Egypt)
After these things, Ahmed Shaitan desired of the Jews a hundred and fifty thousand great gold pieces, and he also said, If ye bring them not quickly, I shall kill you with the sword. And when the Jews…
I Saw Myself in a Dream
I saw myself in a dream
Head bent, on the fifth floor
I was thinking of something, looking out the window
Recalling something, I suppose.
And the sidewalk was so close,
Looking up at me with mild…