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.
To Kill a Foe
To kill a foe: write these twelve names on deerskin or calfskin parchment on Monday evening at the third or fourth hour, or at those times at night. And this is what you shall write:He who gives forth…
Dedication (to Gracia Nasi): Ferrara Bible
It would not seem proper, most magnificent Lady, that now we are about to print the Bible in our Spanish tongue, translated from the Hebrew word for word—so rare a work never before known until our…
Regulations: On Purchasing Copies of the Talmud
502. Since our eyes have seen the great neglect of Torah among schoolchildren, caused by [not] printing of folios of the Gemara [with Rashi’s commentary], because the…
Spanish Translation of the Bible
In his De officiis, most discreet reader, Tullius Cicero writes that nothing can move us so powerfully as to see some form or kind of benefit, which must be esteemed all the more, the less it is of an…
Novelot ḥokhmah (Fallen Fruit of Wisdom)
[ . . . ] Now you know and are witness that I have composed several works on various topics. However, I did not write them in order to publish them; rather, I prepared them for my own use, to…
On Life’s Deception and Disillusion
Sad is the man who forgets God
without waking from the dream of his error,
and of the evil that awaits him is never aware
until his sin of his death is the cause.
In his obstinate and…
Tsaḥut bediḥuta de-kiddushin (A Comedy of Betrothal)
Amon and Deborah His WifeAmon:Proclaim to the citizens of our city that in joy and gladness we propose to marry our daughter Beruriah to the handsome Jedidiah, Sholom’s son. Our most…
Voices from a Time
I have no memory of that train trip, probably because there was nothing to remember. Our arrival in Vienna, on the other hand, impressed me. That city reminded me somewhat of Trieste, with its wide…
Multiculturalism versus Pluralism in Israel
Do Israelis have one culture or many cultures, or both one culture and many cultures? This question stems from three directions.
One direction is political. The Rabin assassination exposed a deep…
Ruling on the Kosher Lamp
I was asked by a resident in London concerning a portable electric lamp called “Kosher Lamp” which has a separate upper part which is made to direct the light or to cover it up altogether by twisting…
Portrait of Itzik Manger
Chaim Gliksberg was well-known for his portraits of literary figures. Here, he has pictured Itzik Manger, the celebrated Yiddish poet and playwright. Manger was particularly renowned for his modernist…
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…