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.
The Schlemiel as Modern Hero
[ . . . ] Modern Jewish humor grows from the tension of having to reconcile a belief as absolute as Elijah’s with an experience of failure as absolute as that of the priests of Baal…
The Second Scroll
And then—it was after I had returned from Tiberias to Tel Aviv to attend a literary soirée—then the creative activity, archetypical, all-embracing, that hitherto I had sought in vain, at last…
Yoine Bird
They were neighbors for many, many years. Thirty, forty, maybe half a century . . . ever since Colony D . . . was established back at the beginning of the eighteen-nineties.
Their parents grew up…
Bom Retiro, or The Childhood Neighborhood
Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, the so-called “Days of Awe” arrived.
There was no Jew in all of Bom Retiro who, God forbid, would ever think of not observing them. Any endeavor, no matter how important…
The Story of Isaac
The door it opened slowly,
My father he came in,
I was nine years old.
And he stood so tall above me,
His blue eyes they were shining
And his voice was very cold.
He said, “I’ve had a vision
And…
The Jewish Catalog
Perhaps the most difficult question we have been asked in the course of compiling this catalog has been, “What exactly is it?” Having realized quite early that there are no preexisting…
Life Is with People: The Jewish Little-Town of Eastern Europe
Charity is only one part of maasim tovim, but it is a very important part. The most popular word for it in the shtetl is tsdokeh. This is one of the Hebrew words which have been incorporated into the…
Jewish Dreams and Nightmares
The case of Kafka, the acculturated Jew, shows how a man may feel his way into a body of collective history through his very consciousness of being outside it: Kafka brooded over the experience of the…
Passage from Home
Father glared; Willy smiled. Father sat erect, his skullcap square on his head; Willy slouched, all relaxed, his cap slung at an angle like a beret. One declaimed the Hebrew text, loudly…
Compulsion
We waited half through the night, with the news leaking out to us. The confessions were going well. The time was long because the state’s attorney was going over each fact, nailing down the evidence…
Mr. Sammler’s Planet
They went down in the elevator, the grey woman and Mr. Sammler, and through lower passages paved in speckled material, through tunnels, up and down ramps, past laboratories and supply rooms. Well…
Megilat sefer (The Scroll of the Book)
I was the fourth [child] born and the first son, a tender darling to my father and my mother (cf. Prov. 4:3) after my mother had given birth to three daughters. My parents were worriers and trembled…