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.
Founding Program
The purpose of Agudat Israel is the solution of the respective tasks facing the Jewish collectivity, in the spirit of the Torah. In accordance with this purpose, it sets itself the following goals: (1…
The Columbus Platform
In view of the changes that have taken place in the modern world and the consequent need of stating anew the teachings of Reform Judaism, the Central Conference of American Rabbis makes the following…
Lamentations
In a dingy kitchen
Facing a Ghetto backyard
An old woman is chanting Jeremiah’s Lamentations,
Quaveringly,
Out of a Hebrew Bible.
The gaslight flares and falls . . .
This night,
Two thousand…
A Bintel Brief
Dear Editor,I am a Russian revolutionist and a freethinker. Here in America I became acquainted with a girl who is also a freethinker. We decided to marry, but the problem is that she has Orthodox…
Birds Are Drowsing
Birds are drowsing on the branches.
Sleep, my darling child.
At your cradle, in the field,
A stranger sits and sings.
Once you had another cradle
Woven out of joy.
And your mother, oh your mother
W…
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…
Hut ha-meshulash (Threefold Cord)
The Hasid praises the Almighty on the right hand, and the unbeliever tosses away and truncates the principles of faith on the left, while the Torah scholar, standing in the center, maintains silence…
Silliness and Sanctimony
Yetkhen:And how crude he was with me! He wants to arrange with Papa to marry me! How do you like that? I’d like to meet the man who’ll force me to marry someone! No! No father can do that—I have…
Letter Addressed to the Conference of Constantinople in Favor of the Jews of the Orient
Paris, December 1876
To Mr. President and Members of the Conference of Constantinople
Sirs,
You were nominated to discuss the interests of a great number of people in the Orient, and to accomplish a…
La Reine de Chypre
La reine de Chypre (The Queen of Cyprus) is a grand opera in five acts, first performed in Paris in 1841. It is regarded as one of the greatest works of the composer Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie…
Celebratory Processional in Prague to Honor Joseph II
A month after the birth of future Emperor Joseph II (March 13, 1741), the Jews of Prague held a festive procession in honor of the happy event. The procession, which was planned and led by the…