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 Soldier’s Diary Entries
18 April 7 pm. News. Amzanak told us that the CO [commanding officer] had asked him how many men we had, what they were doing, and whether many could work with wagons, and Amzanak said that we had…
Silent Prayer, Synagogue of Amsterdam, “The Amidah”
This painting of a service at the Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam is similar to a painting for which Jacques-Émile-Edouard Brandon received a medal at the Paris Salon of 1867. Both are views of the…
Purim Page (Mi-she-nikhnas adar)
This lithograph of a micrographic drawing, believed to be from Poland, reproduces the text of the scroll of Esther in its entirety, as well as prayers and poems for the holiday of Purim. In the center…
Memories from My Life
From Kiev I took a wagon heading for Zhitomir. Few of my readers will still remember the long coach wagons in which the past generation traveled before the railroads…
Let Us Seek and Investigate
I have always regretted one thing. When I ponder the Hebrew literature of all periods I ask myself: Why is it that our forefathers, who spent so much time on the study of matters of religion and law…
The History of the Shulḥan ‘arukh and Its Popularization
In those days a new light shone forth over the skies of Polish Jewry—R. Solomon Luria. [ . . . ] This great rabbi was one of those unique individuals, one of those few men of virtue that not every…
Sleep, Sleep, Sleep
Shlof, shlof, shlof,
Der tateh vet kumen in dorf,
Vet er brengn an epeleh,
Vet zayn gezunt dos kepele.
Sleep, sleep, sleep,
Daddy is traveling to the village,
He will bring back a little apple,
So…
Yizkor (cover)
Yizkor: Tsum ondenk fun di gefalene vekhter un arbeyter in erets-yisroel (Yizkor: In Memory of the Fallen Watchmen and Workers in the Land of Israel) commemorates fallen Jewish guards and workers who…
In the Beys-medresh [House of Study]
Photograph of two men studying in the beys-medresh (Heb., bet ha-midrash, a room or building used for traditional Torah/Talmud study as well as prayer). This is one of many photographs taken by…
Mirele Efros
This is a program for an October 26, 1898, production of Mirele Efros at the Thalia Theatre, located at 46–48 Bowery on New York City’s Lower East Side. Written by Jacob Gordin, Mirele Efros tells the…
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…
My Dear Shtetl Motele
A.
Grandma Rekhl—my mother’s mother, whose name the members of the household and the people of the town all pronounced with exactness: Rekhl precisely with an “e,”…