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.
The Third Reich and the Jews
Without the appropriate distance, writing history is particularly difficult and thorny in this case. And there is an additional element of complexity. Forced into the thankless role of the prosecutor…
Protestant–Catholic–Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology
The outstanding feature of the religious situation in America today is the pervasiveness of religious self-identification along the tripartite scheme of Protestant, Catholic, Jew. From the “land of…
Shadow and Synagogue
Shadow and Synagogue is one of a series of about one hundred photographs by Tress that appear in his 1975 book, Shadow, A Novel in Photographs. In the book’s visual narrative, the photographer’s…
On the Way from Assembly Point Atzdemeriam to Transit Camp in Teda, Ethiopia
In 1991, Israel launched Operation Solomon, a covert military operation to airlift Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel) to Israel. Fourteen thousand men, women, and children were transported to Israel over…
Dorothy A. Richman, Rabbinical Student, Jewish Theological Seminary
This portrait of Dorothy Richman, a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York, appeared in Leibovitz’s 1999 book, Women. Richman was one of the first female rabbinical…
Divre ha-yamim le-malkhe Tsarefat u-vet Otoman ha-Togar (Chronicle of the Kings of France and the Ottoman Empire)
There was a man in Castile called Americo. He had a large ship, in which he placed a great number of supplies, as much as his soul desired, and he also resolved in his heart to amass as much booty as…
Devar sefatayim (Mere Words): On the History of Crimea
It was in the year 5457, which is the year 1109 in their calendar [1697 CE], in the month of Tevet, when the chill and the cold began and the water of the great river Ozo Sway [the Dnieper…
Lev tov (A Good Heart): Rules for Raising Children
[ . . . ] Each man should raise his children to Torah and good deeds. Each man should always ensure that his children learn Torah while they are still young and he should have them learn…
Prayer
These are the “prayers” that Brites Henriques recited and the notary transcribed.
Every Morning [Prayers]
Praised be the Lord
Who is so enlightened,
May you, My Lord, be served
By making me…
Commentary: On Psalms
For the leader. A psalm of David. The fool said in his heart there is no God . . . (Psalms 14:1–2).
Now [the psalmist] declares the reasoning of the fool, and what argument he has…
Socrate, overo, Dell’humano sapere esercitio seriogiocoso (Socrates, or On Human Knowledge)
Socrates’ defence was very carefully heard in the presence of the Academicians in the public assembly over a few days, and it produced no little disquiet in the minds of the judges, whose minds turned…
Jephthah Sacrifices His Daughter
When Jephthah set out for the road
He did so full of happiness and joy.
He had a daughter, a solitary cypress,
Her visage fairyborn; two…