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.
Leonard Bernstein
Al Hirschfeld was most famous for his caricatures of actors, musicians, and other figures from the arts and public life. He himself preferred to be known as a “characterist.” After the birth of his…
Ewer and Basin
This ewer and basin from Turkey were used to wash hands ritually during the Passover seder. Owned by the Benguiat family, a large and prominent Sephardic family in the Ottoman Empire, the objects…
Interior of the Beth Elohim Synagogue Charleston, South Carolina (Solomon Nunes Carvalho)
The only image of the interior of the first synagogue of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, a congregation established in Charleston in 1749, is this picture, painted from memory by Solomon Nunes Carvalho. The…
The Reformed Heder in Pinsk
The Zionist movement in Pinsk expanded and developed, and some of the best [local] activists concentrated their efforts there. Activities, such as lectures, debates, and the sale of Shekels and Jewish…
A Sephardi Émigré Encourages Levantine Jews to Move to Mexico
It is a great pleasure for me to have this occasion, offered to me by the serial La Luz, to inform readers of the current situation in the Republic of Mexico, and to mention some of the reasons why…
We Speak and Write This Language against Our Will
Dear Vara of my soul,
Wherever it may be, I am always hit in the face by a pet peeve, some vexation and angst, due to the misbehavior of certain of our women who still do not know whether they are in…
Speech: On American Judaism
There is no room for Ghetto Judaism in America. Look at any of the creeds and churches in our free land! They are all more tolerant, more liberal, more humane and sympathetic in their mutual relations…
Modern Judaism in Orient and Occident (East and West)
The author is no novice in this area of research; however, thirty years have passed since he was last engaged deeply in the history of religion. During the ten years of his stay on the banks of the…
The Polish Lad
If my father had been able to foresee even a thousandth part of the trials I was to endure he might have been rather less ardent on the night my mother conceived me. . . . Now, of…
Jewish Man and Woman from Frankfurt
The Jewish couple in Frankfurt am Main depicted here are wearing distinctive clothing that would have clearly identified them as Jews: the man’s collar, hat, and cloak, and the woman’s ruff and winged…
Tikun keriyah le-kol laylah ve-yom (Supplications for Every Day and Night)
The frontispiece of this book of penitential prayers, printed in Amsterdam by David de Castro Tartas, proclaims the pro-Sabbatean beliefs that were then widespread in the Amsterdam Jewish community…
Jacob Huli’s Me‘am lo‘ez (From a People of Foreign Tongue)
The masterpiece of eighteenth-century Ladino literature is the encyclopedic commentary on the Bible, Me‘am lo‘ez (From a People of Foreign Tongue), by Jacob Huli, the first volume of which was…