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.
Primary Structures, cover
Elaine Lustig Cohen designed this catalog cover for the Jewish Museum in New York’s exhibition, Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors, at a time when she was developing a bold new…
A Lower East Side Vacation
“Green fields, fair forests, singing streams, pine-clad mountains, verdant vista—from the monotony of the city to the monotony of nature. I wanted a complete change, and so I went to the East Side of…
Torah Scroll and Case
The origin of this Torah scroll is in Turkey. It was donated by the Camondo family, one of the most important Jewish families in Istanbul, many of whose members settled in Paris and greatly…
Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious
The occurrence of self-criticism as a determinant may explain how it is that a number of the most apt jokes . . . have grown up on the soil of Jewish popular life. They are stories created by Jews and…
Is There a Need for a World Sephardi Federation? A Debate by Jewish Delegates in Vienna
My brothers and teachers: for some years, since I was enlightened by the luminous erudition of our pious forefathers, the rabbis in Babylon and the wise writers from Spain, my attention…
Flesh and Spirit
In the early period of Jewish history there was a considerable party which took a materialistic view of the national life, in the sense that it had no ideal beyond that of making the State supreme at…
Notes in Response to the Zionist Cause
3 Shevat 5663 [January 31, 1903]
From all the Zionist essays emerge that which we see with our very eyes: their entire purpose and effort is to instill the supposition among Jews that the Torah and…
From Death-Camp to Existentialism: A Psychiatrist’s Path to a New Therapy
In attempting this psychological presentation and a psychopathological explanation of the typical characteristics of a concentration camp inmate, I may give the impression that the human being is…
At the Heart of the Harem
Esteemed by his bosses, envied by his friends, husband of an intelligent wife, owner of a lovely house, Si Bou-Djemaa might well have been happy if the desire for a new wife had not tormented him.
Tal…
Plunder of the Ghetto Following the Fettmilch Riots against the Jews of Frankfurt am Main Plunder of the Ghetto
In August 1614, a gingerbread baker named Vincenz Fettmilch (d. 1616) led a mob that rampaged through the Judengasse (Jews’ street) in Frankfurt am Main, injuring and killing two or three Jews…
Ketubah (Amsterdam)
This ketubah was written and illustrated for the wedding of Isaac Pereira and Rachel de Pinto, members of prominent Sephardic families. At the top a pair of hands clasp, and vignettes along the sides…
Velika Avlija (Old Synagogue), Sarajevo
The Velika Avlija (Old Temple or Synagogue) is the oldest synagogue in Sarajevo. It served the city’s first Jewish community, Sephardim, who began arriving in Sarajevo in the mid-sixteenth century…