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.
Sefer Raziel (The Book of Raziel)
Sefer Raziel (also known as The Book of Raziel the Angel) is a book of practical kabbalah that may have been composed in the thirteenth century, though scholars believe parts of it date from earlier…
Ketubah for Isaac Pereira and Rachel de Pinto
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…
Self-Portrait
In a self-portrait from ca. 1721, Catherine da Costa depicts herself at work in a studio, painting a portrait of mother and child that resembles paintings of the Madonna and child.
Sefer ha-kavanot (Kabbalistic Intentions in Prayer and Performance of Precepts)
This manuscript copy of Sefer ha-kavanot (The Book of [Kabbalistic] Intentions [in Prayer and Performance of Precepts]) by Ḥayim Vital was written in Meknes, Morocco. The kabbalists in Safed stressed…
Portrait of Simcha Vaz (1582–1643), painted by her son, Moses Belmonte
Simcha (Gimar) Belmonte (born Vaz; 1582–1643) was the wife of Jakob Israel Belmonte (a poet, writer, and trader). She and her husband were among the founders of the Jewish community in Amsterdam after…
Surgical Illustration
These pages are from a manuscript, De dificuldade de ourinar (On Difficulty in Urinating), by a Jewish physician and surgeon in Amsterdam, Samuel de Leon Benavente (1643–1722). He was known for his…
Jewish Man in Cairo
This engraving depicting a Jewish man in Cairo, Egypt is from Cornelis de Bruyn’s travelogue, Reizen van Corn. de Bruyn door de vermaardste deelen van Klein Asia, de eylanden Scio, Rhodus, Cyprus enz…
Gingi, or, a Private Tent Camp
Night ThoughtsThat night, I had the weirdest thoughts. I don’t know why, but suddenly I thought to myself how great it is for a boy to have a bed as comfortable as my own. He can lie in bed and get a…
Love among the Palms
Six days left. Less than a week! That means, after next Saturday I would no longer see Sayyid. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t change my clothes. I gritted my teeth, because I was afraid the shriek…
Untitled
The iconography in Pichhadze’s paintings from the 1980s defies easy definition. This untitled work incorporates both abstract and figurative elements. The framed “nature” scene with its butterflies…
Love Dub
In Love Dub, small figures climb up the walls of the gallery wearing flipper-like footwear. A similar image was replicated in a tattoo, shown in a photograph as part of the installation. Katzenstein…
Resident Alien I
Landau was working in a studio that she set up in an abandoned space in Tel Aviv’s central bus station, which had once been living quarters for illegal foreign workers, when she conceived of Resident…