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.
Haggadah (Amsterdam)
This Haggadah from Amsterdam was printed by Joseph ben Abraham Athias and is adorned with elaborate copper etchings by artist Abraham Bar Jacob. It was the first Haggadah to include these sorts of…
Venice Haggadah
This Haggadah from Venice was commissioned by Moses ben Gerson Parenzo, the last of the Parenzo Hebrew printers, and issued at the Caleoni press on behalf of the Bragadini family. This page shows the…
Haggadah (Prague)
This Haggadah from Prague, printed by Gershom and Grunim Katz with illustrations that are thought to be by Ḥayyim ben David Shaḥor, is one of the earliest Haggadahs ever printed. It was the first…
Ketubah (Amsterdam)
In 1654, Rahel bat Hannah Rovigo married Isaac ben Abraham de Pinto, a member of a prosperous Jewish family of merchant bankers in Amsterdam. The ketubah (marriage contract), which outlines the…
Jüden Schul (Jewish Synagogue)
When the engagement of two parties occurs, many Jews are invited, young and old, and they gather in a big room and each of the young Jews has a new…
Ari nohem (Roaring Lion)
Why this knowledge, which is called “the science of kabbalah” [ḥokhmat ha-kabbalah] contradicts itself, and each one of these names (i.e., “science” and “kabbalah”) is not suitable to it…
Leḥem Yehudah (The Bread of Judah): On the Fate of the First Edition
I printed my book [Leḥem Yehudah] in Venice at the beginning of for the Almighty Shadai [in gematria = 1553] has dealt very bitterly with me (Ruth 1:20) and the ruler of Rome [the Pope] decreed that…
A Lovely Song about an Event in Hamburg
Which tells how a certain man took up with a prostitute in Hamburg, his first wife hearing of this came from Poland, how he was forced to give her a writ of divorce and this almost cost him his life…
Couplets of Joseph the Righteous
“It is only because the Lord was with us,”
says the old Israel;
in You lies holiness,
Israel’s praises.
“It is only because the Lord was with us,”
You elevated us above other men,
You saved us from…
Introduction: Salamone de Rossi’s Ha-shirim asher li-Shelomoh (The Songs of Solomon)
May the language of truth be established forever, or as the poet …
Counting the Omer
Leiba recognized that Fraydel was in danger of disappearing down the well of her own thoughts.
Fraydel was a secret keeping herself from the world. When she spoke, it was yet another way of keeping…