The Atlas

Plate I

The Sky of Sages

ומצדיקי הרבים ככוכבים לעולם ועד

U-matzdikei ha-rabim ke-khokhavim le-olam va-ed, "and those who turn the many to righteousness, like the stars forever" (Daniel 12:3)

A descent through a night sky, time running downward and six fields of sky side by side, one for each region. Each star is a sage, its size an editorial magnitude and its brightness the number of ties the census records. Choose a star and its lines appear: a teacher, a father, a contemporary named in a biography. Each age gathers into a constellation of its own and then returns to the band.

Open the sky

Plate II

One Milky Way

הלל ושמאי קבלו מהם

Hillel ve-Shammai kiblu mehem, "Hillel and Shammai received from them" (Avot 1:12)

The same stars regathered into a single spiral you can turn. Hillel and Shammai sit at the core, each generation lies one step further out, each school of thought is an arm, and the arms rise above or fall below the plane by camp: the Chassidic courts above, the Lithuanian yeshivot and Mussar below, the Sephardi line near the plane. Every recorded tie pulls its two stars together, so the arms that learned from one another lean toward each other.

Turn the galaxy

Plate III

Am Olam

עם עולם

Am Olam, "an eternal people"

A world map that plays. Every community the sources can place, sized by how many Jews lived in it, from the first exile to this year. Press play and the map moves with the story: the massacres and the expulsions flare where they happened and leave a mark that stays, the migrations draw themselves where a source supports them, and the timeline underneath carries the whole four thousand years at once.

Play the map

Plate IV

Yeshiva Atlas

מקום תורה

Mekom Torah, "a place of Torah" (Avot 4:14)

Where Torah was learned, drawn on vellum, from the guilds of the prophets to the kollelim of this year. Each dot is an institution with its own panel of observations and sources; a destroyed yeshiva burns and then leaves ash for forty years. Under the map the piece asks how large the yeshivot actually were, and answers that the great Lithuanian houses were, for their time, institutions of a few hundred.

Open the atlas

Plate V

Synagogue Founding Atlas

שארית ישראל

She'erit Yisrael, "remnant of Israel," the name the first congregation took

Where today's American congregations began. Press play and the years run from the first English colony in 1585: the colonies shade in and become states, the immigration routes enter from the right edge in the colors of their source, and a dot drops onto the map for each congregation in the year it claims for itself. Shearith Israel in New York is the first in 1654, and it stands alone in the city for 171 years.

Play the atlas

Plate VI

Congregations Today by Denomination

מקום קבוע לתפילה

Makom kavua li-tfila, "a fixed place for prayer"

The same census held still. Every congregation listed as active today is one dot, and the dots regroup as you scroll: into slices by movement, into a timeline by founding year, onto the map, and then into columns by the kind of county around them, by how the county voted in 2024, by its median income and by its reported rate of violent crime. Pick one movement in the key and follow it through every view.

Scroll the census

Plate VII

Where American Jews Are

ופרצת ימה וקדמה וצפנה ונגבה

U-faratzta yama va-kedma ve-tzafona va-negba, "and you shall spread out to the west, the east, the north and the south" (Genesis 28:14)

A spike for every county, standing on an oblique map of the country. Switch the map to community growth and the spikes split in two: gains rise above the ground and declines hang below it, measured against the growth of the state around them if you ask for that. Shade the counties by the 2024 vote, by income, by how rural they are or by five other measures, and the chart underneath sets where American Jews live against where all Americans live.

Open the map

Plate VIII

Three Centuries in Three Minutes

ואעשך לגוי גדול

Ve-e'escha le-goy gadol, "and I will make of you a great nation" (Genesis 12:2)

A film of the same country filling up. Twenty-three refugees land at New Amsterdam in 1654 and the map runs forward at about a year a second: towns until 1877, then states, then in 2024 the states break apart into counties. Pink lines bring arrivals in from the direction they came, violet rings mark the moves made inside the country, and the band along the foot names the law or the event of the moment. Under the film sit the counts it rests on and twelve documents, from the Newport congregation's letter to Washington to the front page of the morning after the Triangle fire.

Play the film