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 Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth
Thus there are two kinds of truths, equally ascertained, and therefore equally admissible; the one proceeding from intellect and called rational truth, the other formed in the heart, and called moral…
Map of the Land of Israel
This hand-drawn map of Hebron, Israel, is from an autograph manuscript of Melekhet Shelomoh (The Work of Solomon), Solomon Adeni’s commentary on the Mishnah.
Torah Wrapper, Rome
According to the Hebrew inscription, this silk velvet, gilt silver-thread embroidery and silk brocade Torah wrapper was donated in 1727 or 1728 to the Scola Castigliana (a synagogue founded by Jews of…
Jewish Women from Adrianople (Edirne)
These depictions of Jewish women from Adrianople (present day Edirne, Turkey) is from a travelogue by French geographer Nicolas Nicolay, who is believed to have done his own illustrations. Considered…
Diploma of Doctor of Medicine (University of Padua)
This diploma of Doctor of Medicine was awarded to Jacob Mahler by the University of Padua, Italy. Mahler, born in Bingen-on-Rhine, Germany, studied medicine and philosophy, and in 1695 was awarded a…
Portrait of Francisco Lopes Suasso as a Young Man
Don Francisco (Abraham Israel) Lopes Suasso (ca. 1657–1710) was a prominent financier of Portuguese Jewish heritage. In 1688, he lent Prince William of Orange two million guilders, enabling him to…
Portraits of the Franks-Levy Family
In the 1730s, the German Jewish Franks-Levy family commissioned an artist to create portraits of three generations of the family. These paintings are all attributed to Gerardus Duykinck, a member of a…
Illustration from Kehunat Avraham (The Priesthood of Abraham)
Kehunat Avraham (The Priesthood of Abraham), completed in Venice in 1719, is an interpretation and retelling of sections from the book of Psalms in verse. The Hebrew text in this illustration comes…
‘Evronot Manuscript (Rules for Calculation of the Calendar)
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…
Drawing of the Lebanon War
The Lebanon War of 1982 began on 6 June, when Israel invaded southern Lebanon after repeated attacks and counter-attacks from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) operating in southern Lebanon…
Sefer ha-zikhronot (The Book of Remembrances)
[ . . . ] And all the more so with our brethren the people of Israel who come from the lands of the dispersion, who do not know and have not seen the way in which every person called by the name of…
Colophon: Tefilah le-Moshe (Prayer of Moses)
All the letters in this beautiful new prayer book,
from beginning to end, I set with my own hands.
Gele, daughter of R. Moses the printer
and Frau Freide, who bore me among ten children, may they…