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.
The Tip of the Yod
Hebrew woman, who knows your life?
You came in darkness and in darkness depart.
Your sorrows and joys, your hopes and desires
Were born within you and die in your heart.
Daughters of other nations
Ma…
Kedushat Yom Tov (The Sanctity of Yom Tov)
Reuben spoke in the marketplace with two men, inviting them to come to his house for the purpose of giving them the monies accrued from a business partnership, and they entered his house…
The Bible View of Slavery
A Civil War–era Jewish leader defends the institution of slavery in the South based on his reading of the Hebrew Bible.
Yosef omets (He Will Be Stronger): On the Ten Days of Repentance
980. It is written in Re’shit ḥokhmah [The Beginning of Wisdom (1579), by Elijah de Vidas]: The name of the Ten Days of Repentance indicates that they were ordained to amend the year. They are days of…
Sefat ha-shulḥan (Rim of the Table)
To cause a blessing to rest within your house, by virtue of your deeds in this world throughout your life; to include [a blessing in] the world to come, as indicated by the length of your days…
The day my heart was troubled doubly
The day my heart was troubled doubly,By your love, O crown unto my head,Delight and joy were mine beside the sheepfolds,When your beauteous traits were joined to me.Lovely are your dancing steps, you…
Upon Leaving Lisbon
Here is the infamous [city] gate,
the one of the olive branch and the sword,
for those who leave, it is so closed
and for those who enter, so open.
If in you peace is exiled
you cannot offer that…
Uncle Isidore
When I observe a toothless ex-violinist,
with more hair than face, sprawled like Karl Marx
on a park seat or slumped, dead or asleep,
in the central heat of a public library
I think of Uncle Isidore…
Burning Holy Books
Holy books, said my friend, angry,
there’s no such thing. Books,
books: let them talk
to us about books.
It was a hot night.
At noon light rips
through the room, and everything’s clear:
over the…
A Prayer
Blessed art Thou, Lord, our God,
King of the Universe,
Who has kept us and protected us,
and supported us until this day
it would be better we had never seen.
You deprived us of nothing,
neither…