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.
Female Plaque Figurine Holding Disk
There are numerous terra-cotta plaque figurines of females, some naked and others clothed, holding disks, mostly from northern Israel and Transjordan. Many come from border towns and towns whose…
Seal of Elyashib Son of Ashyahu (or Ishyahu)
A double-line border surrounds the inscription on this seal, made of black paste or serpentine (a magnesium silicate), found at Arad. A central boss with flanking lotus buds separates the names…
Seal with Archer
This stamp seal depicts an archer shooting at a fleeing quadruped, possibly an antelope. The action is difficult to make out. From the viewer’s perspective the archer is behind the animal while the…
The Normal Heart
Ned’s apartment. It is stark, modern, all black and white. Felix comes walking in from another room with a beer, and Ned follows, carrying one, too.Felix:That’s quite a library in there…
Kabbalah and Criticism
Freud says that primal anxiety was toxic, and that the primal limitation was of inspiration. If the anxiety of influence be imaged as a lack of breathing space, then the voluntary limitation that…
From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro
The life and literary undertakings of Isaac Orobio de Castro are symbolic of the fate and fortunes of the Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi diaspora in seventeenth-century western Europe. His passage…
The Notion of a “Jewish Community” in France
The use of the notion of “community” to define French Judaism is not self-evident. On the one hand, if “community” renders the medieval kahal, the concept has a long history and has engendered any…
How a Samovar Helped Me Theorize Latin American Jewish Literature
There’s a marvelous story by Eduardo Stilman about a silver samovar. It caressingly describes the prodigious object—its polished ebony handles, finely carved arabesques, mischievously-turned spigot…
The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties
Jewishness, the conscious affirmation of the qualities that make Jews Jews, presumes a contrast between Us and Them. The Jews constitute an Us; all the rest of humanity, or, in Jewish language, the…
Do Not Rely on Egypt, Rely on God
Ha!
Those who go down to Egypt for help
And rely upon horses!
They have put their trust in abundance of chariots,
In vast numbers of riders,
And they have not turned to the Holy One of Israel,
They…
Facing Forward
Toward the end of the 1990s, a storm erupted among members of the Ethiopian community. They discovered that suspicions were being raised about the health of their blood, and that donations were…