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 Eve of War 18
A week after we broke up, I allowed
Myself the pleasure of the dainties of pain.
This time without the luxury of tears.
I let it get worked up. In the throat,
In the heart. Who would have believed…
We Had an Understanding
Savta, grandma,
could it be our transparent skin,
skin that doesn’t protect the flesh,
not in the least.
This story of ours
has details that are better left untold,
it’s good to leave blots of…
Mandatory High School/Class of 1973
A young man graduates and heads off to get damaged
He’s got nothing urgent for now and though they push him around he manages
He has no water in his knees
He has no plaster in his joints
He’ll be…
Seven Laments for the War-Dead
Mr. Beringer, whose sonfell at the Canal that strangers dugso ships could cross the desert,crosses my path at Jaffa Gate.He has grown very thin, has lostthe weight of his son.That’s why he floats so…
The Dakar Courier Excerpts
Because of an error on the part of the graphic artist, the map of the world was printed without Switzerland. The country was swallowed up in the mauve of France, the blue of Germany, the Italian…
In the Image
Before her death, Naomi had dragged Bill Landsmann to enough Holocaust movies that he knew exactly what would happen in them. His son and daughter-in-law knew better than to…
On Seeing the Statuettes of Ezekiel and Jeremiah in the Church of Notre Dame
They have given you French namesand made you captive, my ruggedtroublesome compatriots;your splendid beards, are epicene,plaster whiteand your angersunclothed with Palestinian hills quite lostin this…
Kashrut
Setting up a kosher home is not at all difficult once one gets the hang of what one is and is not allowed to do and eat. There is sometimes an unfortunate tendency among those just beginning to keep…
Wasteland
He carried his camera and case into the dining room, and as he stood there for a moment, peering at the table through the twilight haze in the room, he breathed deeply of the familiar holiday odors…
Notes from the American Revolution
I have returned from a war—a revolutionary war fought without firearms, without generals, without front lines. For ammunition, the smoldering spirit of the black people of America, like a gusher of…
Ḥavvot Yair (Villages of Yair): A Curriculum of Study
[Question:] A certain gentleman, a close and trusted friend, a Torah scholar who had read scripture, learned Mishnah, and ministered to many learned talmudic scholars, invited me to come to the holy…
World of Our Fathers
To think of the culture brought over by the immigrant Jews as a “mere” folk culture is a patronizing error, though an error often indulged in by later generations of American Jews. There was, of…