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.
Jewelry Box
This exquisite jewelry box was crafted in Nuremberg, Germany, before 1540 and given to a bride for her wedding. Etched in steel, copper-plated, and partly gilt, the panels, on four sides and the lid…
Circumcision Set
This silver circumcision set was crafted in Salonika in the Ottoman Empire. The cylindrical silver casket holds a circumcision knife; its handle is made from agate. A similarly shaped powder box and…
Portrait of Samson Wertheimer
Samson Wertheimer (1658–1724) occupied a number of prominent roles, including court Jew, Austrian financier, and chief rabbi of Hungary and Moravia. This portrait was painted around the time when he…
Shadai’a (Dedicatory Plaque)
This shadai’a (dedicatory plaque) from the Romaniote community in Ioannina, Greece, is made of repoussé silver with an engraved Hebrew inscription. The central inscription is a rhymed text dedicated…
Ardashir-nāmah (Shāhin-i Shirāzi)
This late seventeenth-century manuscript contains a full copy of the text of the Ardashīr-nāmah (The Tale of Esther), an epic poem by the fourteenth-century Jewish Persian writer Shāhīn-i Shīrāzī…
Torah Cover (?)
This intricately decorated textile, possibly used as a Torah cover, was produced in Prague around 1600. Four squares adorn its center, the top two containing vases ringed by flowers and vines and the…
Purim Tray
This Purim tray from the seventeenth century was made in Hamburg, Germany. A fine repoussé piece, its center is adorned with a court scene, complete with a ruler sitting on a raised throne, surrounded…
Cover for Circumcision Cushion
This silk cushion cover, embroidered with metallic thread and metallic braid, is thought to have been made in Istanbul. Divided into two horizontal planes, with a narrow border running on three of its…
The 1745 Expulsion of the Jews from Prague
This illustration, from Jüdische neue Zeitung vom Marsch aus Wien und anderen Orten der jetzigen zwölff Jüdischen Stammen (Jewish Newspaper from the March to Vienna and Other Places of the Current…
Portrait of Menachem Vivante
Menachem Vivante (b. 1650) was a rabbi in Corfu in the eighteenth century and a member of a prominent merchant family. In this oil portrait, painted when he was eighty-five years old, he is depicted…
Paper Astrolabe
In the back of a manuscript collection of astronomical texts, which includes one of Abraham Ibn Ezra’s works on the use of the astrolabe (a tool for astronomical calculations), is a set of crude but…
Joan Nathan’s Jewish Holiday Cookbook
Miriam Steinberg of Highland Park, Illinois, would never think of making her weekly challah without first separating some dough, reciting a blessing over it, and then burning it in the oven, in…