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.
Outlines of Liberal Judaism
[ . . . ] God chose the Jews: they are a chosen people, though not a people (as I hold and as I shall subsequently maintain) in the sense that the English or the…
Toil
Dress me, good mother, in a glorious robe of many colours, and at dawn lead me to [my] toil.
My land is wrapped in light as in a prayer shawl. The houses stand forth like frontlets; and the roads…
The Machine
The machine, the tool.
Walls without bricks—my cage.
My hands’ holy blood
Drips from the walls.
But the blood of my soul
Drips beyond the threshold
Both out there and in here
Drips the blood of…
Jeshurun
Jeshurun sings when they see him
Tender beauty in her youth
She plays and her violin is on her bosom
And its singing brings gladness to the heart of the gloomy
An unadorned graceful gazelle
Embellish…
X-Rays
Work, tradesmen, shops, the town is there
with old maids polished down by emptiness
on haberdashers’ threshold where the antique sun
brushes off jewels dusty with being looked at.
Dressed up for…
Moon
An old sight too has its moment of birth.
A birdless sky
Strange and set apart.
Facing your widow on the moonlit night stands
A city plunged in crickets’ tears.
And when you see a road still…
The Butterfly
He was the last. Truly the last.
Such yellowness was bitter and blinding
Like the sun’s tear shattered on stone.
That was his true color.
And how easily he climbed, and how high.
Certainly, climbing…
And in That Drowning Instant
And in that drowning instant
as the water heightened over me
it suddenly did come to pass
my preterite eternity
the image of myself intent
on several freedoms
fading to
myself in yellowed Basle…
God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children
God has pity on kindergarten children,
He pities school children—less.
But adults he pities not at all.
He abandons them,
And sometimes they have to crawl on all fours
In the scorching sand
To reach…
To the Sons Who Were Banished from Their Fathers’ Tables
My father, my father, how you stood over me
Against childhood sorrows and the agony of years.
You raised children, father, and also great hopes,
and in return received nothing but despair and woes.
…
Written in Pencil on a Sealed Box-Car
here in this carload i am eve with abel my son if you see my other son cain son of man tell him that i
The Idea Remains
Since the song of victory is silent
About the man now overcome.
I will serve as Hector’s witness.
There once was a Germany, we all know it, that belonged to the world, and that was received by the…