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.
Esther Play for Purim
Purim plays (Purim shpiln, in Yiddish), sometimes also called Esther plays, have been known since the fifteenth century in both Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities. These folk plays were performed on…
1920 Diary
Isaac Babel offers a stark and unflinching account of the pogroms, looting, and violence against Jewish communities he witnessed as a war correspondent during the Polish-Soviet War.
Sites of Jewish or New Christian Residence in Early Modern Western Europe
Following the expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula in the late fifteenth century, Jews settled in areas of Europe that promoted religious tolerance. Others concealed their identities as New…
Purim Spiel (Purim Play)
Much of Adler’s work has a Jewish subject. In his native Poland, it was customary for small bands of players to go from house to house performing skits on the holiday of Purim. The group of figures in…
Omer Board
This omer board is used to keep count in the ritual of counting the forty-nine days from the first day on which barley was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem until the day before Shavuot.
Proclamation
Brothers!The slaughter and plunder in Kishinev, the likes of which have not descended upon us since the days of Chmielnicki and Gonta—command us to open our eyes and see our status in this country as…
At Goodman and Levine’s
There were two reasons why Di Yunge chose to carry on by themselves in a separate cafe. One was purely financial. The coffeehouse on Division Street was too dear for young writers, most of whom either…