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.
Torah Scroll and Case
The origin of this Torah scroll is in Turkey. It was donated by the Camondo family, one of the most important Jewish families in Istanbul, many of whose members settled in Paris and greatly…
Shearith Israel Synagogue
Congregation Shearith Israel was the first Jewish congregation established in North America, and the only Jewish congregation in New York City from 1654 until 1825. Between 1654 and 1730, it used…
Portrait of a Girl with a Red Belt
Portrait of a Girl with a Red Belt is one of many portrait miniatures that Jeremiah David Alexander Fiorino painted. He was a court painter in Dresden who painted portraits of members of the royal…
Christ Preaching at Capernaum
Maurycy Gottlieb saw his art as essential to his universalist vision, namely, as a way to improve Polish-Jewish relations. As he said, “I am a Jew and a Pole and, God willing, I want to serve both.”…
Efficiency in Public Service
The opportunity for which we have been struggling has come. We have the opportunity of developing a Homeland, but nothing more than an opportunity. It is urgent that we enter upon the work, urgent…
Is There a Need for a World Sephardi Federation? A Debate by Jewish Delegates in Vienna
My brothers and teachers: for some years, since I was enlightened by the luminous erudition of our pious forefathers, the rabbis in Babylon and the wise writers from Spain, my attention…
A Shtetl Is Starving to Death
Not far from Lódz is a small town called Brzezhin. It has been a town of tailors from the beginning of time. When it was under Russian rule, Brzezhin was a center for manufacturing cheap clothes for…
The Noise of Time
There once arrived at our house a person completely unknown to us, an unmarried lady of about forty, in a little red hat and with a sharp chin and angry dark eyes. On the strength…
How People Live in the Soviet Union
Signs of the new life and of the new “construction” in Trostinets can be discerned, strange as it may sound, in the destruction of the synagogues…
Jews in the Russian Revolution
[ . . . ] Not only did Jews not have anything to do, even remotely, with oppositional circles expressing discontent with the…
The Miracle of Hebrew Reborn
Hebrew reborn—but, was it ever dead? Or, if it was, how can a dead language be born again?
The millions of Jews all over the world who say their daily prayers in Hebrew, not only understanding but…
The Beginning of December 1918
In came the beginning of the month of December 1918.
Like the cheerless, cold drizzle, dirty frozen air hovers over the fields. Everywhere fragments of sky seem to be scattered over mounds of earth…