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.
On the Language of the Jews Who Lived in Ancient Russia
In our previous studies we attempted to prove that the first Jews in southern Russian were not Germanic, as is claimed by Graetz and other German scholars, but rather Bosporan and Asian, as they…
Letter to Tuvie Feder
“You are angry about the language into which my book has been translated? You sound like chirping birds and clattering animals and wild beasts in the forest! Kindly recall, my dear friend! What…
Multilingual Exemplar Leaf
This sheet by the calligrapher and scribe Iehudah Machabeu presents samples of different “lettering,” including Hebrew (at the top), Arabic, Greek, Castilian, English, French, Italian, and Latin. It…
Shirat ha-yam (The Song at the Sea)
Then did Moses and the Children of Israel sing this song (Exodus 15:1). Before we explain the words of this song, it is appropriate to clarify its poetic structure. I maintain that we, the Israelite…
Livyat ḥen (Ornament of Grace)
A simple four-syllable poem, where each of the four members of the line has four tenu‘ot, with no yated. In some of them, the members do not rhyme…
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…
The Book of Resemblances
The author of the book in question hides behind various pseudonyms, which are promptly presented as voices from the beginning of time and as figures both familiar and strange: for he is himself a…
When Loners Come Together: A Portrait of Hebrew Literature at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
As a subjective experience, the early and easy entry of the [Hebrew] authors of the early twentieth century into the literary arena had deep, formative, and constant influence. This entry marks a…
Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint
This is a story that begins with J. It was the fifteenth of July 1930.
It’s about J; it’s about a consonant still a little vowelish, a little i-ish in the aftermath of a magic philology.
Were I not…
Be’ure ha-midot (Clarification of the Virtues)
And Joshua said unto all Israel: “Draw near,” etc.—Joshua 3:9.
In Midrash Genesis Rabbah, section 5 (Gen. Rabbah 5:7), it is stated: “Rav Huna said: ‘He stood them up between the two staves of the…