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.
Fuente clara (Clear Fountain)
The polemical Judeo-Spanish work (written in Hebrew characters) Fuente clara (Clear Fountain; drawing on Psalm 84) was published in Salonika. Its anonymous author, a philosopher and physician…
Hannukah Gelt
Can you guess, children, which is the best of all holidays? Hannukah, of course.
You don’t go to cheder for eight days in a row, you eat pancakes every day, spin your dreidel to your heart’s content…
Don’t Be Selfish
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there lived a poor Jewish family in a small Lithuanian village. The oldest son, Borukh, had to go to the forest every day to gather dry twigs for…
Filke
Berl had no father. His mother was very poor and had to go to strangers to make money for bread. Berl used to stay at home alone, and waited for hours for his mother. He had no sisters or brothers, so…
The Talmud
We see that the categories of understanding the nation produced in its adolescence are a result of emotions developed in its childhood. According to our approach, we can conclude that the Talmud—which…
Leaving Cheder
Adam Muszka likely painted this scene from memory. As a child, he had attended cheder, a traditional Jewish elementary school, in his native Piotrków Trybunalski, a Polish town of about 51,000…
The Wanderings of the Little Blue Butterfly in Fairyland
Illustration from the children’s book The Wanderings of the Little Blue Butterfly in Fairyland, first published in Budapest, Hungary, in 1912.
Calendar for the Year 5665, an Intercalated Year
The Hebrew calendar uses a system of intercalation, adding an additional month to the calendar year to synchronize the regular twelve-month calendar with the moon, sun, and seasons. The Hebrew…
Astrological Calendar from Kabbalistic Manuscript
This astrological calendar contains a zodiac rota, divided into twelve astrological signs. The rota was one of the authoritative schemata that kabbalists used to map the structure of the sefirot, the…
Shloyme ha-melekh (King Solomon)
An illustration by El Lissitzky from Chaim Nahman Bialik’s Shloyme ha-melekh (King Solomon), from an issue of the Hebrew journal Shtilim (Saplings) that was printed in 1917 in Moscow, two days before…
Ornamental Artillery Shell Casing
The soldier-artist Raphael Avraham Shalem used found objects, such as shell cases, as the material for his artworks. On this shell casing, he engraved a view of Rachel’s Tomb, a site revered by Jews…
The Moon and Sleep
Simeon Solomon’s The Moon and Sleep was inspired by the Greek story of Endymion, a beautiful youth beloved of Selene, the goddess of the moon. In some versions of the myth, Zeus grants Endymion…