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 Largest Mill in the Orient (Postcard)
When the Allatini Mills building was built in 1898, it was considered the largest industrial building in the “Orient” (then the catch-all term for the non-European world east of Europe). The first…
The Forward Building
Founded in 1897 in New York City, the democratic socialist Yiddish daily Forverts quickly became the most popular Jewish newspaper in the United States (and the most widely circulated non-English…
Tiglath-pileser III, Summary Inscription
The land of Bit-Humria (the House of Omri) . . .
[ . . . his] auxiliary [troops . . . ] all of its people . . . to Assyria I carried off. Pekah, their king, [I/they ki]lled . . . and I appointed…
Seven-Branched Candelabrum
Menorahs with seven arms are traditionally displayed in synagogues as a reminder of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. This brass menorah by Gyula Pap also has seven arms but is strikingly different in…
Entering to House of Prayer
Steinhardt was one of the founders of a group of artists in Berlin called Die Pathetiker (The Sorrowful Ones), early practitioners of what later came to be known as expressionism. Expressionists…
Leah the Fishmonger
All along the street, on both sides, on the lowest floor of the houses there are a multitude of stores, large and small. The majority of them are pressed into holes so narrow as to allow passage for…
At Grandmother’s
I dragged my belongings over to Grandmother’s, my books, my music stand, and my violin. The table had already been set for me. Grandmother sat in the corner. I ate. We didn’t say a word. The door was…
The Fat of the Land
In an air-shaft so narrow that you could touch the next wall with your bare hands, Hanneh Breineh leaned out and knocked on her neighbor’s window.
“Can you loan me your wash-boiler for the clothes?”…
There Are Many Riddles in Life
There are many riddles in life,
Mounds and mounds of answers too;
The wise men have many solutions,
The morons have a desire for life.
Once a wise man told me:
“There is one essence of being,
Only…
The Right Hon. B. Disraeli M.P. Chancellor of the Exchequer
Twice elected prime minister of Britain, Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) initially turned to writing in an effort to pay his debts; his early works were fashionable “silver-fork novels” depicting an…
Songbook for Jewish Organizations
The attempt to edit a songbook for Jewish organizations is such an entirely new undertaking—one without any precedent whatsoever—that it would appear necessary to offer a few words of…
Synagogue in the Park at Wörlitz, Germany
Designed in the German neoclassical style, the Wörlitz synagogue was modeled on Rome’s Temple of Vesta, featuring a circular building with a conical roof. It was commissioned by Prince Leopold…