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.
Kitchen Judaism
Kashruth was not only redefined but repositioned as a growing number of American Jews restricted its observance to the home. The new geography of kashruth promoted a more flexible approach toward…
Building a Community of Torah and Tzedek
If being Jewish is to regain its meaning for Jews today, the Jewish community must be transformed. While it’s impossible to “know” the exact shape the new paradigm will take, we must begin, with…
Modeh Ani
Thank you, Lord, for having me awaken
to become a witness to the flaming of the sun.
Someone gently shook me from my bed
as I was somewhere in a dream
of visiting Jerusalem again.
And I walked (still…
Portrait of a Boy in a White Shirt (Self-Portrait)
This expressionist self-portrait dates from the earliest period of Bloom’s career. He and his friend Jack Levine were the beneficiaries of a Harvard professor and patron of the arts, who provided them…
V-J Day in Times Square. August 14, 1945
Alfred Eisenstaedt shot one of the most iconic photographs of the twentieth century in Times Square, where crowds were gathering to watch the electric news ticker for an anticipated announcement by U…
Sueño No. 1: “Artículos eléctricos para el hogar”
Dream No. 1: Electrical Appliances for the Home is one of a series of photomontages that Grete Stern produced from 1948 to 1951. They appeared in an Argentinian women’s magazine illustrating a weekly…
Rythme Coloré
Rythme coloré (Colored Rhythm) embodies the concept of Simultanisme, a style developed by Sonia Delaunay and her husband Robert Delaunay in the 1910s. Simultanisme (also known as Orphism) was based on…
Shiviti
This remarkable illustration is at the same time a shiviti—traditionally, a decorative plaque bearing the verse: “I am ever mindful of the Lord’s presence”—and a topographic map of the land of Israel…
Negersklavin Bahia (Black Slave Bahia)
This carte-de-visite photograph was made at a time when photographs the size of visiting cards were popular. Some were mass produced, for sale to the public. People collected and traded photographs of…
Mekor Barukh—My Memoirs
In general, the power of the influence exerted by the Master, R. Mendele, on my revered father over many years since his return from (studying with) him, was very great. […
Book of My Life
[ . . . ] In the early autumn of 1918 we entered a new circle of Bolshevik hell, the period of mass Red Terror. The murder of Uritskii and…
The Rambam in True Perspective
In our national gallery—the gibbore ha-umah—there are three great Moseses: the law-giver of Mt. Sinai, Moses Ben Maimon of Cordova, and Moses Isserles of Cracow. Twice was the winged word coined:…