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.

Manuscript page of drawings of bird and plants on top and Yiddish text below.

Yiddish Translation of the Bible

This manuscript page of Deuteronomy 1:1–7 is from a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Yiddish, from Italy. It is decorated with two storks and an ornate chapter heading with the opening word of the…

Printed page of Latin text, with portrait of man in center, surrounded by wreath with cherubs, and Latin text in decorative frame below.

Dialoghi di m. Magino Gabrielli Hebreo, sopra l’utile sue inventioni circa la seta (Dialogues of Magino Gabrielli, Hebrew, On the Utility of His Inventions in Silk Production)

Dialoghi di m. Magino Gabrielli Hebreo, sopra l’utile sue inventioni circa la seta (Dialogues of Magino Gabrielli, Hebrew, On the Utility of His Inventions in Silk Production), printed in Rome, is a…

Photograph of bathroom wall with bathtub and small mirror above that reflects a face.

Self-Portrait in Blue Bathroom, London, 1980

Self-Portrait in Blue Bathroom, London, 1980 is the first of a series of photographs called The Ballad of Sexual Dependency that Goldin created over ten years, beginning in 1976, and which was…

Photograph of a wide-eyed baby with mouth open and ferns and flowers on their head.

Good Friday

Meyer is best known for his role as a pioneer in the use of digital technologies in photography, including the practice of digitally combining two or more photographs to form a single image. He…

Painting of man with head down and arm draped over bar in front of buildings and a giraffe head leaning over the wall next to his cheek.

A Street in Weisswald

Petlin was known for his narrative art and for depicting subjects drawn from his own personal history. Weisswald (White Forest) is a series of nine paintings, almost all of which are set on what looks…

Photograph featuring four young girls holding onto each other's shoulders walking down the stairs in a train with two older women in the front and back.

Blind Women, Egypt

Photojournalist Lori Grinker has become well known for her photographs of the aftereffects of war and for her photo essays on her brother’s death from AIDS and her mother’s struggle with cancer. In…

Painting of young men and women wearing military uniforms and berets, facing various directions with upset expressions.

Lost Youth

Lost Youth is from a series of paintings called Forever, whose themes are youth, love, and death. Hod intended this picture, which depicts attendees at the funeral of a young Israeli soldier, as more…

‘Olam hafukh (The World Upside Down)

Although the troubles worsened and the city of Padua was in a state of turmoil [see Esther 3:15], there remained hope and divine mercy for the Jews, as not one person in the ghetto was dead or ill…

Dedication (to Gracia Nasi): Ferrara Bible

It would not seem proper, most magnificent Lady, that now we are about to print the Bible in our Spanish tongue, translated from the Hebrew word for word—so rare a work never before known until our…

Amude shesh (Marble Pillars)

And with this ethical teaching I saw fit to seal up the pillar of Torah, which in our generation is very much weakened, and on the verge of the abyss, as all its methods of study are corrupt from the…

Midrash Shemu’el (The Midrash of Samuel)

Furthermore, I say that another reason for this [commentary] is that since all of these ethical principles were given to Moses at Sinai and it is necessary to fulfill them, when one hears about them…

Moshia‘ ḥosim (Savior of Those Who Take Refuge)

On the signs of the plague and the poisonous fever that is called pestilence, and how a person should conduct himself to guard himself from them, in accordance with the nature of this lower…