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.
Nahalat Binyamin Street, Tel Aviv
Nahalat Binyamin Street was the longest road in the city during Tel Aviv’s earliest years. In the 1920s, it was paved and became Tel Aviv’s main commercial street. Over the next few decades, new…
The Holy Balshemtov
The holy Balshemtov walked in the field
In the cold dawn went walking in the field
As winds were blowing from the north.
Bitter cold from the north.
His limbs started to freeze.
Once his limbs were…
The Jews of Hamadan in 1892
A Jewish girl, having been sent by her parents on an errand to a Jewish neighbour, was one day suddenly seized in the street by a Moslem and forcibly carried off to a Moslem house and compelled to…
A Pogrom in Fez
We have awoken from a horrible nightmare that I believed myself unable to describe to you.
The sack of the Mellah [the Jewish quarter of the city] by the mutinous Sherifian troops began at midday on…
Pair of Torah Finials
Torah finials are a pair of ornaments used to decorate the upper ends of the rollers on which the Torah scroll is wound. The Hebrew term rimonim, which means “pomegranates,” references the…
In the Junk Cellar
A large load of old rags and broken things had been delivered to the basement of the junk dealer today, and the newcomers were received unkindly and with surly faces in all corners.
“Please do not…
Hear, O Israel!
I want to profess straight off that I am a Jew. Does it require justification if I write in a spirit other than that of defending the Jews? Many of my fellow tribesmen know themselves only as Germans…
The Russian Jew in the United States: Sweatshops in Philadelphia
[ . . . ] We enter a sweatshop on Lombard, Bainbridge, Monroe or South Fourth Street. It may be on one of several floors in which similar work…
Heder
Jacques Brandon set his painting of a heder, a traditional Jewish elementary school for boys, in a Mediterranean or Near Eastern location or in an imagined distant past. The boys are dressed in white…
Judaism and the Jews
The question I put before you, as well as before myself, is the question of the meaning of Judaism for the Jews.
Why do we call ourselves Jews? Because we are Jews? What does that mean: we are Jews? I…
Perversion of Justice (in Serbia)
In one of the recent issues of Ha-Melits, which for unknown reasons I only received today, I read about Mr. W. Shor’s complaint about the Serbian Jews’ refusal to accept Jews, persecuted in other…
In Judah and the Galilee
Not fire and sun—but our blood will redden, Oh Zion, your mountains—
Right after disembarking and finishing my business with the numruk [custom house], I hurried to Petah Tikva. My friends implored…