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.
Laying the Pipes of the National Water Carrier from the Sea of Galilee to the Negev
This photograph by Moshe Gross is very much in the tradition of Zionist and Israeli iconography, which favored images stressing the heroic aspects of Zionism and the “new Jews” who were building…
Orpheus: A History of Religions
Why does the name of Orpheus, “the first of the world’s singers,” as Lefranc de Pompignan called him, appear on the title-page of this volume? Because he was not merely “the first singer,”…
Souls of Chaos
The conventional pattern of living, based on propriety, on the requisites of good character and conformity to law—this corresponds to the way of the world of order. Every rebellion against this…
God’s Gifts
My most pious songs have I written
On rising from my sinful bed.
God has given me a wealth of sins,
And God alone has saved me from my sins.
Translated by David Soeterndorp.
The Lithuanian Yeshivas
These students, who poured into the Yeshivah from near and far, what were they seeking? And what was the Yeshivah seeking to give them? Did the students undertake to complete their course work at…
First Address to the Knesset
It is with a feeling of deep reverence and consecration that I rise to open the Constituent Assembly of the State of Israel, the first Knesset Israel of our time in this eternal…
Eulogy for Roi Rotberg
Yesterday morning Roi was murdered. He was lulled by the quiet of the spring morning and did not notice those lying in wait in the furrow.
Today, let us not cast aspersions at the murderers. How can…
Leviathan
Having laid out for the reader my thoughts about religion, revelation, and faith/belief, their manifold aim and their various components, I now consider…
A Summary of Modern Jewish History
The Jews are everywhere, in the old world and in the new. They can be found in Jamaica, in New England, in Washington’s America as well as in Bolívar’s, and even in Austral lands. If this people were…
Manifesto of the Communist Party
A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals…
Circumcision Ceremony
Between 1723 and 1737, illustrator Bernard Picart partnered with the Dutch bookseller and publisher Jean-Frédéric Bernard on Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (Religious…
Portrait of Eliseba Lopes Suasso de Pinto
Eliseba Lopes Suasso de Pinto, a member of the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish community, was the wife of Abraham Suasso da Costa, a banker in the Hague. In this portrait, she is depicted smiling, in…