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.
Meditation
After Jehudah Halevi
How long will you remain a boy?
Dawns must end.
Behold the angels of old age.
Shake off temporal things then
the way a bird shakes off the night dew.
Dart like a swallow
from…
Diary
In the month of Tevet of the same year I entered that school and began studying Greek with tremendous dedication. I repented of all my previous actions and habits, just as I had promised my father (of…
Bi’ur ha-Gra: Glosses to Shulḥan arukh
6. “It is proper,” etc. The phraseology employed by the Tur is “And one should cover one’s head so that one should not be in a state of bareheadedness”—this is taken from the words of the Ba‘al ha-…
Toward a History of the Education of Russian Jews
In our first series of discussions, we explored the struggle between the government and the Jews, which was initiated by the former and ended with its triumph over the latter; in the second…
Moreh nevukhe ha-zeman (Guide for the Perplexed of Our Time)
According to the workings of the natural order there are three periods through which each primordial nation passes from the time it comes into being until it passes from the scene and perishes:
- The…
Rome and Jerusalem
What we have to do at present for the regeneration of the Jewish nation is, first, to keep alive the hope of the political rebirth of our people, and next, to reawaken that hope where it slumbers…
Portrait of Jacob Ries
Jacob Ries (1660–1751) of Prague first worked as a badchan (jester) for weddings. In 1710, he became court jester in Vienna under Charles VI. The artist of this portrait of Ries is not known. It…
Wedding Ceremony
Johann Christoph Georg Bodenschatz’s Kirchliche Verfassung der heutigen Juden, sonderlich derer in Deutschland (Religious Constitution of Today’s Jews, Especially Those in Germany), published in…
Calendar Manual
Sifre ‘evronot—manuals for calculating the Jewish calendar, including leap years and holidays—were a popular genre of Ashkenazic illustrated manuscripts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries…
Flyer for Redeeming Captured Jews
This flyer calls for the Jewish community to pay a ransom to rescue Jewish captives from the 1686 siege of Buda, which resulted in the capture of the Hungarian city from the Ottoman Empire by armies…
Portrait of Issachar Baer Teller
The physician and surgeon Issachar Baer Teller received his medical training by studying and practicing with other physicians in Prague. He completed his studies under the guidance of Joseph Solomon…
Collection of Yiddish Stories from Southern Germany
This page is from a manuscript containing stories in Yiddish. It was copied and illustrated in Tannhausen, Germany between 1580 and 1600, for the Ulma family, who owned a number of important…