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.
Tikun li-kro’ laylah va-yom (A Tikkun to Read Day and Night)
The frontispiece of this book of penitential prayers published in Amsterdam, Tikun li-kro’ laylah va-yom (A Tikkun to Read Day and Night) has a three-tiered illustration. The top level depicts Moses…
Bukhari-Russian-Hebrew Dictionary
Title pages from Bukhari-Russian-Hebrew Dictionary, the first trilingual dictionary for Bukhari, Hebrew, and Russian.
Detective Comics, May 1939: The Amazing and Unique Adventures of the Batman, cover
Batman is one of the longest-running comic series in the world, in continuous publication since 1939. When it made its debut, it was unique in featuring a hero who was an ordinary man without…
“The Spirit,” June 2, 1940
The Spirit was launched in 1940 as a special supplement for newspapers, designed to help them compete with the crime and superhero comic magazines, which were then wildly popular. It ran as a…
Captain America, no. 1, cover
Captain America, the eponymous hero of this comic series, was given a backstory similar to that of one of his creators, Jack Kirby. Like Kirby, Captain America was born on New York’s Lower East Side…
“Superduperman,” Mad #4
Over its more than fifty-two years of publication, Mad Magazine skewered everyone from politicians to movie stars, with a particular dedication to rooting out hypocrisy. Here it spoofs its own genre…
Sick, Sick, Sick
Sick, Sick, Sick was very different from other comic strips of the 1950s. It had the format of a comic strip but did not have conventional story lines or superheroes. Instead, it was more like an…
Leonard Bernstein
Al Hirschfeld was most famous for his caricatures of actors, musicians, and other figures from the arts and public life. He himself preferred to be known as a “characterist.” After the birth of his…
Astérix le Gaulois, no. 1, cover
Astérix le Gaulois is set in the first century BCE, during Rome’s conquest of Gaul (France), focusing on the inhabitants of a small village who, given superhuman strength by a magic potion prepared by…
The Egg That Disguised Itself
Poet and scholar Dan Pagis wrote and illustrated a children’s book about an egg, which, searching for an alternate identity, tries unsuccessfully to disguise itself as a flower, a mushroom, a clock…
Masterpiece
The title of Masterpiece offers an ironic commentary on the career of its rising star artist, Roy Lichtenstein. It features a blonde woman and “Brad,” a recurring character in Lichtenstein’s comic…
“Chickensouperman” from L’il Abner
L’il Abner, set in the fictional town of Dogpatch in Kentucky, presented a stereotyped view of the U.S. South. But its trenchant satire targeted political and social issues, and popular culture. Here…