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.
The Death of Moses
Excerpts from The Death of Moses, a legendary account of the death of Moses from the literature of the Beta Israel community, in Arabic and Ge’ez, researched by scholar Jacques Faïtlovich in Ethiopia.
Torah Pointers (Ukraine)
These two Torah pointers (yadayim) are from Galicia, one made of ivory and brass and the other of wood. Yadayim (hands) are used during public reading of the Torah, so that the reader may avoid…
Paper Cuts for Shavuot
Paper cuts were a distinctive Jewish folk art in Eastern Europe, where rural Poles and Ukrainians also practiced the craft. Jewish paper cuts had their own techniques and imagery and were used for…
The Tale of the Ba‘al Shem and the Dybbuk
This is no fairy tale, it really happened.
In our shtetl, there was a bright young man named Móyshele. He was as smart as a whip, and also a good-for-nothing. Then all at once he disappeared, and no…
The Fire’s Victims
Sheet music for “Die fire korbones” (The Fire's Victims). This song was written in memory of the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City, which broke out on March 25, 1911…
The Poultry Market
Pissarro inhabited the French countryside villages of Pontoise and Eragny and was a keen observer of rural life. His dignified depictions of peasant labor and sociability, such as this lively poultry…
Les Las (The Weary)
Jules Adler’s many paintings depicting the everyday lives of the working-class in Paris and labor strikes earned him the nickname “the painter of the humble.” Les Las (The Weary) was inspired by a…
Two Towers
In this photograph shot on a snowy day in New York City, icy bare branches on the staircase of a building dwarf the people and two skyscrapers, creating a composition in which diagonal lines and…
City of Killings
Rise and go to the town of the killings and you’ll come to the yards
and with your eyes and your own hand feel the fence
and on the trees and on the stones and plaster of the walls
the congealed…
On the Slaughter
Sky, have mercy on me!
If there be in you a God and to that God a path
and I have not found it—
you pray for me!
I—my heart’s dead and there’s no prayer left in my mouth
and no strength and no hope…
High Tea in the Sukkah
This drawing of a gathering hosted by Dr. Hermann Adler, the chief rabbi of Great Britain (wearing a yarmulke and standing at right), represents the adaptation of the British custom of high tea to the…