Judaic Studies: Primary Sources
Primary Sources
This is a short list of primary sources available online. For more help finding primary sources, check out the History research guides.
- Center for Jewish History Digital CollectionsThe Center Digital Collections provides access to the digital assets of the Center for Jewish History and its five partner organizations, the American Jewish Historical Society, the American Sephardi Federation, the Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
The Digital Collections OPAC features a variety of digital objects, including rare books, children’s books, personal letters, official decrees, maps, memoirs, posters, photographs, scrapbooks, oral histories, finding aids, dissertations, and much more. - Berman Jewish Policy ArchiveA collection of Jewish policy publications on Jewish communal topics
- American Jewish Committee ArchivesHouses over a million documents, hundreds of movies and radio shows, and excerpts from oral histories relating to the past century of American Jewish history.
- Early American Reform Prayer BooksDigitized editions of 19th-century prayerbooks.
- Experiencing History: Jewish Perspectives on the Holocaust:This digital primary source presents original source material that is fully translated,
contextualized, and annotated. The resource presents materials from the
victims’ perspective, such as diaries, letters, and film. - Historical Jewish PressThis site contains a collection of Jewish newspapers published in various countries, languages, and time periods, including newspapers in English and French.
Photographs
- Centropa: Jewish Witness to a European CenturyInteractive database which lets you explore Centropa's large collection of photographs, which are linked to individual oral histories about the Jewish experience in twentieth-century Europe.
- YIVO: People of a Thousand TownsA selection from YIVO's large photo archive of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. You must register to use the search feature.
Digitized Books
- S.D. Urusov, Memoirs of a Russian GovernorUrusov was governor of the province of Bessarabia during the 1903 pogrom in Kishinev.
Collections and Anthologies of Primary Sources
Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages. Robert Chazan, ed. New York: Behrman House, 1980.
The Jew in the Medieval World. Jacob Rader Marcus, ed. Revised ed. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1999.
The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History. 2nd ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
The library holds a number of anthologies of Hebrew and Yiddish poetry. Some examples:
Guides to Primary Sources
Bennett Muraskin, The Association of Jewish Libraries Guide to Yiddish Short Stories (Teaneck, NJ : Ben Yehuda Press, 2011). PJ5124 .M87 2011
A thematic guide to Yiddish short stories in translation. Includes plot summaries arranged by subject and bibliographical information.