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.
For Becoming Invisible
For becoming invisible: write the following on a deerskin parchment, wrap it in three layers of leathers, and wear it: Glospats Tsamarkhad, Kilkel, YHWH. Take a rooster in the month of March and put…
Amulet for a Newborn Girl
Printed amulet for an infant girl from Germany. It was (presumably) printed alongside its companion amulet for a male child (see “Amulet for a Newborn Boy”). However, the pair were separated. A woman…
Printer’s Introduction: Bomberg Bible, Second Edition
Thus saith the humble Jacob ben Chajim ben Isaac Ibn Adonijah: “He entereth in peace, where the righteous rest upon their couches, who walked in uprightness.”
Praised be the Creator, who exists and…
Editor’s Apology: She’elot u-teshuvot Maharil
Thus said the editor [megihah], who bursts forth [megi’aḥ] in prostration from his place, and offers his greeting of peace with a bow and while kneeling. His labor is for all those who are wise of…
Dod Mordekhay (Uncle of Mordechai)
Before we write the answers to the wise man’s questions we will cite the questions he posed in his writings, so that the answers can be positioned opposite the…
The Book of Israel
God, Robin and me had the funniest time trying to decide. I mean it was bizarre. I suppose we had always assumed we would do it, but then, well, when you actually think…
In a Nutshell
Credo in a kind of
American jewish Hamlet-like
bagel, too round for action
yet leavened enough by contact
with the near-dead past—you call it
landscape, I call it history—to provide
a layered vantage…
Germans, Journals, and Jews/Madison, Men, Marxism and Mosse: A Tale of Jewish-Leftist Identity Confusion in America
[…] the Madison Left experience, at least in the early and mid-1960s, was never simply an American experience. It was more jumbled, at least more composite—like America itself? In my own not untypical…
Modern Trends in Orthodoxy
Diversity is a characteristic feature of Orthodoxy today. Orthodox leaders and movements inspire the extremes of the Jewish political spectrum, from the supernationalism of Meir Kahane…
An Alternative Al Heyt
For the wrong we did before You by listening to voices at odds with what we knew was right;
For the wrong we did before You by not listening to voices telling us unpleasant truths;
For the wrong we…
Letter to King Artaxerxes and the King’s Reply
And in the time of Artaxerxes, Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel, and their colleagues wrote to King Artaxerxes of Persia, a letter written in Aramaic and translated.
Aramaic: Rehum the commissioner and…
Yidishe Folkspartei Election Poster
The Folkspartei (Folk Party), which championed the goal of Jewish national autonomy in the diaspora, was founded in Saint Petersburg in 1906 under the leadership of the historian Simon Dubnow and…