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.
Portrait of a Man, Thought to Be Dr. Ephraim Bueno
Rembrandt lived in the part of Amsterdam where the artist’s guild (St. Luke’s Guild) was located; by coincidence, it was home also to a number of Jews. His artworks attest to an interest in the…
Portrait of Aaron Hart (Uri Feivel)
This portrait depicts the first chief rabbi of Great Britain, Aaron Uri Feivel Hart (1670–1756). Hart was born in Breslau and followed his merchant brother to England. His only published work, the…
Torah Ark Valance
The kapporet is a short valance hung over the curtain of the Torah ark that first began to appear in Eastern Europe in the late seventeenth century. The griffins and crowns that appear on this kappore…
Letter Hailing Shabbetai Tzvi as the Messiah
This letter hailing Shabbetai Tzvi as the Messiah was signed by twenty-four prominent members of the Amsterdam Jewish community who had founded a learned society, Yeshuot Meshiho, in his honor. It was…
Dutch Translation of Penitential Prayers and Psalms
This page of selichot (penitential prayers) is from a Dutch translation of penitential Prayers and Psalms made for Sarah de la Farra in Amsterdam.
Torah Finial
This belled gilt-silver Torah finial topped with a crown was made in Amsterdam and has been attributed to master silversmith Pieter van Hoven, who lived near the Jewish quarter and is best known for…
Nimrod, the Hunting Dog
Dad and Nimrod had an agreed-upon whistle. When dad whistled that whistle, even from a distance, Nimrod would immediately leap up from his place and race toward him. Dad said that this was the whistle…
Big Nature I
Abramson’s work from the 1980s focused on combining iconic abstract symbols of modernist art with figurative elements. Here what looks like a column composed of a stack of disks has a stripe overlaid…
Ship/Map (No. 1)
Borkovsky has said that he prefers to think of his work in terms of “cycles” rather than “series.” One group of artworks from the 1980s and 1990s, from which this work is drawn, is sometimes called…
Mental Maps—Involuntary Memory
Mental Maps depicts mirrored images of a 1938 German railway map made from rubber and pigment. The left panel contains two lines of text that read “North is West” and “[I am imprinting it down…
Megilat ‘efah (Scroll of Terror)
The year 5480 of the creation of the earth and heaven, in the first month, which is the month of Nisan, the wailing of the oppressed increased. For then the hooligans began to cut off and harry the…
Gelilot erets Yisra’el (Regions of the Land of Israel)
First, we will describe how to travel from one’s land to Israel. There are many ways by which one can travel. One route is from Venice and another is from the city of Ofen [Budapest], but there is no…