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.
Muscle Jewry
Two years ago, during a committee meeting at the Congress in Basle, I said: “We must think of creating once again a Jewry of muscles.”
Once again! For history is our witness that such a Jewry had…
Letter to the Editor: On Kashering for Passover
Since time immemorial Jews in every city would customarily kasher the dishes they use throughout the year for Passover—glassware by soaking, and pots by heating them to a very high temperature. But a…
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…
After Havdaleh
“ . . . And all those who are on the left side go and wander in the world and seek to dress themselves in the body.”—From Zohar Beraishit
When the Havdoleh candle is extinguished,
In Gehenna, the…
Commentary on Sotah: On the Education of Girls
Rabbi Eliezer said: Whoever teaches his daughter Torah teaches her indecency [m. Sotah 3:4]
The rabbis wrote that this refers only to the Oral Torah; but the Written Torah—even though one should not…
We’re Laughing Our Heads Off
We’re laughing our heads off:
None of us wears a top-hat
We just go around with heads—or without heads—
But the Rabbi of Uman
Holds up a mirror to the sun.
We laugh our heads off
When a gang comes…
Oyfn pripetshik (At the Hearth)
There’s a fire in the hearth
Warm and cozy as it gets
The rebbe teaches children
The Hebrew alphabet
The Melting Pot
Vera [Agitated, coming nearer]: Irony, Mr. Quixano? Please, please, do not imagine there is any irony in my congratulations.David: The irony is in all the congratulations. How can I endure them when…
Verses to a Dictionary and to the Neckerchiefs (Worn by the Gauchos)
With you, it is not impossible to define
creatures and things with the simplicity
of the fish whose scales streak the sea with blue and gold,
Or of the sea itself that swells with the gracefulness of…
The Killers of the Fields
In ascetic silence, in stony skirts,God’s handmaid falls on her face—Flash of an empty night, a forlorn desert waste,Shards of sunset upon the rocks.This land. Trodden, just like this, by a wandering…
The Madonna in the Subway
Across from me in the subway sat the madonna
Crossing her legs,
Bending over a tabloid.
She read about a cashier-girl who jumped into the water
When her bridegroom left her with a rising belly.
The…
O Quickly, Messiah
O quickly, Messiah, come quickly at last,
The world is engirdled with serpents, in vast
Poisonous circles of famine and care,
Terror and torment, decay and despair;
The earth has denied men the…