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.
Bronx Primitive: Portraits in a Childhood
This excerpt from Kate Simon’s Bronx Primitive: Portraits in Childhood explores the controversial and secretive decision many immigrant women made to get an abortions, and the means of obtaining one.
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force Recruitment Poster
This surprising 1942 Hebrew-language poster from Palestine calls for women to serve in an all-female unit within Britain’s Royal Air Force. This recruitment office was not open on Saturdays!
Report from Lucienville Agricultural Colony
Founded in 1900 by members of Lucienville colony, the Jewish Agricultural Society was one of the first agricultural cooperatives in Argentina and is still in existence today.
Mission of Ha-Ḥerut
Without noise and commotion, without blowing the shofar like many newspapers do when they are founded, without sundry promises, we present to you, dear readers, the first issue of the newborn Ha-Ḥerut…
Medicorum consilia in infirmitate Francisci Mariae II urbini ducis (Physicians’ Consilia Regarding the Illness of Francesco Maria II, Duke of Urbino)
Although I have judged you, most serene Duke, to be the very wisest and most learned of all princes, and have perceived you to be very skilled in all of philosophy and the mathematical disciplines, it…
A Letter to Chief Rabbi Raffael Natan Tedesco of Trieste
Most Distinguished Sir,
The undersigned, your most humble servant, is a wretched woman of twenty-three years of age. I was married for five and a half years to this Mr. Lucio Luzzatto, [but] I was…
Rejoice with Jerusalem
Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her,
All you who love her!
Join in her jubilation,
All you who mourned over her—
That you may suck from her breast
Consolation to the full,
That you may…
Responsum: On an Inheritance Dispute
Question: A rabbi died, leaving all his assets in the rabbinic court’s control until his heir came to take possession, and his closest heir, who ought rightfully to inherit, is in Portugal, living as…
Omer Calendar
This omer calendar, marking the days between the holidays of Passover and Shavuot, is still used at Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia. The letters stand for H=Homer (Ladino for Omer); S…
The Book of Jerusalem Journeys
In 1930, Chaim Elazar Shapiro (Spira), the Hasidic rebbe of Munkacs, Czechoslovakia (today, Mukachevo, Ukraine), traveled by rail to Vienna and Trieste and by ship to Alexandria, where he and his…
Testament (Jerusalem)
Behold, an agency was sent to me from the two groups of the yeshiva heads coming to judgment, in whose hand was a written deed, signed by fit and proper witnesses, that the widow, the aforesaid lady…