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.
Memoir
These high officials were not accustomed to wearing European-style shirts. When they decided to dress in the European style, they asked a certain ham, Daniel Andjel, whose shop at the Women’s Market…
Tanya
Now, aside from the fact that it is altogether impossible to interpret the matter of tzimtzum literally, for that would attribute corporeal events to the…
In the Hands of the British
This day [December 29, 1778] the British troops, consisting of about 3,500 men, including two battalions of Hessians under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell of the Seventy-first…
Portrait of Adah Isaacs Menken
Adah Isaacs Menken (1835–1868) achieved celebrity first as an actress, later gaining some literary following for her poetry. Uncertainty surrounds Menken’s family history, as she claimed various…
David Oppenheim
David Oppenheim (1664–1736) was the chief rabbi of Prague. Born in Worms, he was the son of a communal leader and nephew of Samuel Oppenheim (1630–1703), financier and war contractor to Habsburg…
Sabbath Cooking Pot
Because observant Jews do not light fires or cook on the Sabbath, they prepare hot meals before the beginning of the Sabbath. In some communities, families brought their Sabbath stew (known as cholent…
Self-Portrait
This portrait of Jacob Judah Leon Templo, one of three that are known, is believed to be a self-portrait. In it, he clutches a coat of arms featuring a lion, which he himself designed, and holds a…
Nathan ben Samson of Meseritsch (scribe and artist), Psalms
This elaborately decorated title page is from a book of Psalms created by the scribe Nathan ben Samson in Gross Meseritsch, Moravia (today Velké Meziříčí, Czech Republic). On the left is Aaron in his…
Jewish Woman
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…
Flight into Egypt
The title of this painting, Flight into Egypt, refers to the story in the Christian Gospels in which Joseph and Mary flee with the infant Jesus to Egypt to escape the wrath of King Herod. Rabin, born…
Untitled
Baron’s abstract collages were made from found materials, such as scraps of paper, string, and bits of fabric, which she sometimes found in junkyards. She considered them personal and political…
A Bat Mitzvah Party at the 20th Century Fox Movie Studio Commissary, West Los Angeles
This photograph of girls at a bat mitzvah was shot by Greenfield for a project about teenagers in Los Angeles. She was interested, she has said, “in how kids in Los Angeles seem to grow up quickly…