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.
Sha‘agat aryeh (The Lion’s Roar)
What does this man [who contemplates the giving of the Torah] think that Moses our master, may peace be upon him, sat and did for forty days and forty nights when he stayed with the Lord on…
The Jews of the Republic: A Political History of State Jews in France from Gambetta to Vichy
In their glory days during the Renaissance, the king’s fools occupied a privileged place at court: dressed in sumptuous garments comparable in every detail to those of the kingdom’s great, in scarlet…
Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment
History will record that as the twentieth century drew to a close, American Jews were facing a political crisis unprecedented in its scope and nature. For the first time in their three and a half…
Making the Bible Come to Life: Biblical Archaeology and the Teaching of Tanakh in Jewish Schools
The fundamental issue surrounding the use of archaeological material to illuminate the Bible duplicates the classic Torah u-Madda question: How ought we to make use of wisdom or learning that can…
From God to Godliness
[…] I will be arguing that, better to understand the God-idea and more effectively overcome the obstacles to the acceptance of God in our lives, we must view theology with a new perception. Elohut…
Figures in the Nisko Camp, Poland
As a prisoner in the Nisko labor camp in Poland in 1939 and 1940, Leo Haas painted portraits of SS men in exchange for extra food rations and art supplies. He also documented the daily lives of…
Self-Portrait in Graham Hollywood Car
In 1940, Man Ray fled France to escape the Nazi occupation and temporarily settled in Los Angeles. There he established a studio and made a living by his photography (in Paris, he had worked as a…
Design for the Memory
Abraham Rattner painted Design for the Memory in 1943 when the murder of Jews by the Nazis was underway in Europe. He chose Christian iconography, namely, the crucifixion of Jesus, to express his…
Homesickness
In the 1940s and 1950s, Endre Bálint’s paintings began to feature mythological and fantastical symbols and figures, in a style sometimes reminiscent of Hungarian folk art and archaic art. In…
B’nai Or Prayer Shawl
The idea for a multicolored prayer shawl (tallit) came to Zalman Schachter-Shalomi when he was meditating on a midrash about God creating the world while wrapped in a robe of light. Schachter-Shalomi…
The Artist behind Bars (Self-Portrait)
Boris Penson painted this self-portrait soon after he was refused a visa to emigrate to Israel. He depicted himself in prison stripes against a background of a grate against a dreary landscape. After…
Memories
I.
I must revive the experiences of the revolutionary path traversed in order to share memories and knowledge with workers and the younger generation. They want and need to have an…