Everything is a Great Book: a lineage, a place, a community, a work, an object, an institution. Each is a living book — it bears its register, cites its sources, and keeps the trace of its versions.
A Great Book is not a mere record: it is an entity of heritage — a lineage, a place, a community, a work, an object or an institution — treated as a living book. It holds tradition and criticism together, cites each of its sources, and keeps the history of its versions. Three principles, inherited from the manifesto, govern it:
Memory & History
Two registers run side by side, neither judging the other: Memory — the tradition received and handed down — and History — the critical establishment of facts. Each keeps its own voice. Art. 2
Established · Probable · Transmitted · Conjectured
Every assertion carries a label stating how far certainty reaches: established, probable, transmitted or conjectured. We never fabricate — we distinguish what we know from what we surmise. Art. 3
Nothing is erased
Nothing is deleted. A correction creates a new version, and the previous one remains accessible: like a painter's pentimenti, memory keeps the trace of its revisions. Art. 4
Families, name variants, origins, and figures — the memory passed down from generation to generation.
Explore →Cities, neighborhoods, geographies sometimes vanished — where a Jewish presence once lived.
Explore →The diasporas and their worlds: Sephardim, Ashkenazim, Mizrahim, Romaniotes…
Explore →The texts of the heritage — manuscripts (written by hand) and printed works together: codes, commentaries, philosophy, mysticism.
Explore →The men and women who made this memory — rabbis, poets, philosophers, scholars.
Explore →Libraries, archives, and institutions that hold the heritage in trust.
Explore →Documented ritual and historical objects, bearers of a material history.
Explore →Printed books, archives, maps and photographs — the pieces of evidence cited in the Great Books (manuscripts are texts).
Explore →Cross-cutting Great Books — cultural and scientific contributions, memory of persecutions… — that intersect families, places and communities.
Explore →Is a place, a community, an institution or a theme missing from the catalogue?
Propose a Great Book →The most recently written and published Great Books are gathered on a dedicated page.
52 latest published Great Books →To understand the formation of Jewish surnames, see Aaron Demsky's typology.
