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.
A Trumpet in the Wadi
This fictional exploration of interethnic relationships is set in 1980s Israel, a time of significant political and social turmoil owing to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.
Holy Days
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelite people and say to them:
These are My fixed times, the fixed times of the Lord, which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions.
On six days work…
The Firstfruits Ceremony
When you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take some of every first fruit of the soil, which you harvest from the land…
The Hit of the Century
The Jewish theme in Ru.Shtetl is a metaphor. The closest mainstream parallel explaining the essence of what Patrick Lisidze conceived of is Siniavskii’s pseudonym, Abram Terts. Terts’s Jewishness was…
The Wisdom in the Hebrew Alphabet
The fourth letter, ד, has the shape of an open doorway and its name, דָּלֶת, dalet, is cognate with דֶּלֶת [deles], door. The ד also alludes to דַּל, pauper, who knocks on doors, begging for alms. In…
A Dictionary of Political Terms
Politishes verter-bukh (A Dictionary of Political Terms) is an anonymous work billed as “an interpretation of the strange words that are used in Yiddish newspapers, journals, and political and…
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Bavli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature
[ . . . ] A few remarks on foreign words in the literature which for the sake of brevity is here called Talmudic, may not be out of place in this preface.The intercourse between the Jews of the…
How Should Yiddish Be Written?
Ever since the written word in Russia became a bit freer, the country has released a torrent of Yiddish publications of every sort. Various publishing houses have appeared, and every one of them is…
Tasks of Yiddish Philology
Understanding the positive and negative aspects of the language elements introduced by the intelligentsia is particularly important for Yiddish philology, since the task of philology does not end with…
The Trial of Shomer
The secretary rises and begins to read out the indictment:“It has been nearly twenty years since Yiddish began to show signs of becoming a language, to stretch its limbs and demonstrate some forward…
Our Status in the Country, or the Question of Learning Arabic
A.
Mr. Ya‘acov Rabinovitch expressed bitterness about my work in Ha-Poel Ha-Tsa‘ir. I proposed: (1) the formation of one union for all Jewish Arabic teacher…
Intellectual Abstinence or Assimilation (Not Exactly a Letter to the Editor)
[ . . . ] I further wish to say: it is not sufficient that we worry ourselves with the young kids who will grow into goats—we must also be concerned with the mature goats who have already grown horns…