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.
My palate speaks your praise: For the Sabbath before Purim
All my bones say: O Lord, who is like you?
My palate speaks your praise, O my Rock, my Redeemer, my King;
You bring light to my darkness and bring me out of destruction.
The…
A Series of Cases regarding Marriage
In the year 303 [1543], Joseph Catalan claimed that he had married his betrothed Regina, daughter of Moses Ḥayim, on Yom Kippur in front of the gate of her father’s courtyard, by giving her a shawl…
Note to the Reader: Masoret ha-masoret
This is to announce to all interested in my book that when the head of the printers, the princely Daniel Bomberg, the Christian, decided to print the Twenty…
Approbation for a Prayer Book
The great value of prayer is well known. It is formulated in the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings, and explained further in the words of our rabbis of blessed memory. It is called the service of…
Dreaming of Junk Food
Leehee woke me up at a quarter of four in the afternoon and asked me to come with them to Ein Hod for the Seder, despite everything.
“Don’t do this to me,” I said. “You know I’m not…
Exiled from Exile: Existential Reflections
To be in exile, with a religious or historical sense that one is exiled, is to have already a mission and purpose in life. One’s clear project then is to end the exile and to return to…
On Women and Judaism
On occasion I have been asked: How can one so rooted in Jewish tradition, so at home with halakhic prescriptions and proscriptions…
One People, Two Worlds: A Reform Rabbi and an Orthodox Rabbi Explore the Issues That Divide Them
February 9, 2000Dear Ammi,It was a pleasure meeting you in person last week. […]I wonder what the staff and the other patrons thought about the two of us sitting there, me with my beard, peyot, and…
Miriam HaNeviah
Miriam, one of the few women in the Bible to be called a prophet, provides an important opportunity for contemporary liturgists to expand the male-dominated framework of traditional Jewish prayer.
Portrait of Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Tsemakh Tsedek)
Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (1789–1866), the third rebbe of Chabad Hasidism, was a preeminent religious figure of nineteenth-century East European Jewry. The portrait is an early example of Boris…
English Ketubah (New York)
This staunchly Reform ketubah—it is entirely in English—reflects the changing nature of the Hebrew Publishing Company, which had long published primarily for the Yiddish- and Hebrew-using immigrant…