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.
Colophon: Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah
The great work called Mishneh Torah by the rabbi, our master, Moses ben Maimon of blessed memory, comprises fourteen books.
Were it not that the Lord was with us (Psalms 124:1), the Torah might have…
Shir ha-ma‘alot le-David (A Song of Ascents, of David)
Seek ye out the book of the Lord (Isaiah 34:16), and read The Holy Epistle [so] called to water the flock, go and browse.
Perek be-shir (A Treatise on Poetry)
A compilation containing all the techniques of poetry simply put; covering all the principles, meters, rhymes, correct methods, and true rules; sifted and clarified; solid as a bronze mirror, such…
Beri‘ah ve-Zimrah (Briyo and Zimro)
Zimro, the son of Tovas [ . . . ] was very good-looking, highly intelligent, and a scholar. Now, the king loved him more than any other member of the royal household. He was the leading figure at…
Ḥeshek Shelomoh (Solomon’s Desire)
The book’s name: This book [Song of Songs] is called a “song,” a noun bearing several meanings. First, it denotes music, as in the verse: all the daughters of song (Ecclesiastes 12:4), which means…
Burning Holy Books
Holy books, said my friend, angry,
there’s no such thing. Books,
books: let them talk
to us about books.
It was a hot night.
At noon light rips
through the room, and everything’s clear:
over the…
The Song of the Humble
Music with a light Israeli/jazz groove starts playing. The percussions play along the scene in a question and answer routine as if they were the immigration officer Inquiehush meets…
Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy
[The text of this article is published without its accompanying notes.]If I were asked to characterize in a phrase the change that religious Jewry has undergone in the past generation, I would say…
How to Save American Jews
Over the past ten years, the American Jewish community has undergone a radical inner shift in mood, from buoyant optimism to deep anxiety about its future. […]
The present anxiety can be dated to the…
Seventy Faces: Divided We Stand, but It Is Time to Try an Idea That Might Help Us Stand Taller
The predictions of an unbridgeable and cataclysmic rupture within the Jewish community agitate all of us who love and care for and worry about our Jewish people and its future. The twin issues of…
The Jew in the Lotus: A Poet’s Rediscovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India
In late October 1990, I traveled to Dharamsala, a remote hill town in northern India. I came to write about a religious dialogue between a group of Jewish delegates and the XIV Dalai Lama…
Diskin Orphanage, Jerusalem
Bassan is particularly well known for his photographs of the Old Yishuv, the community of Jews established well before the arrival of Zionist pioneers. He was the first Jewish photographer born in…