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.
Refugees
Refugees is very different in style from Josef Herman’s later work. In 1948, the artist disowned his earlier paintings (which he felt were too derivative of Chagall’s paintings) and destroyed most of…
Untitled
Before he became known as a color field painter, Mark Rothko worked in other styles. During the 1940s, under the influence of surrealist artists who had fled Europe for the United States, he began to…
Leaflets (Double V)
Morris Topchevsky painted Leaflets when he was an art instructor at the Abraham Lincoln Centre in Chicago, where the majority of students were Black. Here we see African Americans holding posters with…
Hebrew Lesson, Brooklyn, New York
Cornell Capa took this picture of boys learning Torah or the Hebrew alphabet at a time when Hasidic survivors of the Holocaust were just beginning to rebuild their communities. Brooklyn, New York was…
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Arnold Belkin, sometimes called the Canadian son of Mexican muralism, created traditional murals but also painted ten of what he called “portal murals.” These were large-scale paintings that could be…
The History of the Russian Revolution: From Marx to Mayakovsky
The History of the Russian Revolution: From Marx to Mayakovsky is a large mixed-media work that incorporates paintings, architectural cutouts, stenciled lettering, and found objects. It is one of…
Moscow Evening
In the 1960s, Oscar Rabin began to incorporate everyday objects, such as the newspaper seen here, into his paintings. He also added sand into his work, sometimes blending paint and sand together. This…
Handball Players, Houston Street, NY
Leon Levinstein, widely admired for his street photography, held himself at a distance from the art world and never produced a book of his work. He kept his day job as a graphic designer and went out…
First Class—The Meeting
This is the second version of First Class: The Meeting—And at First Meeting Loved painted by Abraham Solomon. A young man in naval uniform talks with an older man and a young woman, who sits near the…
With Spektor
Mordkhe Spektor [1858–1925] was the “honorary chair” of the “Society of Gluttons and Drunkards.” Though he had not been elected to this “post,” everyone felt that Spektor was the singular candidate…
Jewish Education in the Land of Islam
“If the majority of Jews in Berber territory speak Arabic as their native language and use Spanish when doing business, their main concern is that Hebrew be the…
On the Approach of Childbirth
Before she labored, she was delivered;
Before her pangs came, she bore a son!
—Isaiah 66:7
Fear not, worm of Jacob,
O people of Israel,
For I will help you.
—Isaiah 41:14
The hard, painful hour…