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.
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…
Condemning Neighboring Nations, Judah, and Israel
The words of Amos, a sheepbreeder from Tekoa, who prophesied concerning Israel in the reigns of Kings Uzziah of Judah and Jeroboam son of Joash of Israel, two years before the earthquake.…
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…
Psalm 51
For the leader. A psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had come to Bathsheba.
Have mercy upon me, O God,
as befits Your faithfulness;
in keeping with Your abundant…
Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza, the Portuguese-Jewish philosopher considered one of the most important thinkers of the early modern period, served as a “countercultural” icon for many Jewish artists and intellectuals…
Jehoash’s Fable
He [Amaziah] defeated ten thousand Edomites in the Valley of Salt, and he captured Sela in battle and renamed it Joktheel, as is still the case. Then Amaziah sent envoys to King Jehoash son of…
Praise of the Man’s Body
My beloved is clear-skinned and ruddy,
Preeminent among ten thousand.
His head is finest gold,
His locks are curled
And black as a raven.
His eyes are like doves
By watercourses,
Bathed in milk…
The Rape of Europa
The rape of Europa is a story from Greek mythology in which the god Zeus seduces the princess Europa and, taking the form of a bull, carries her on his back to the Mediterranean island of Crete. The…
Les Hitlériques, cover
Les Hitlériques was a collection of anti-Hitler verses that Knafo composed in Mogador, Morocco in September and October 1939. This courageous and biting publication was very different from his…
My Little Son
I have a son, a little son,
a youngster mighty fine!
and when I look at him I feel
that all the world is mine.
But seldom do I see him when
he’s wide awake and bright.
I always find him sound…
Warsaw Ghetto Memorial (Warsaw, Poland)
When the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial was erected in 1948, it stood amid the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto. One of the key intentions was to convey the message that Jews had not gone to their deaths in the…
Hanukkah
By the window I lit a taper
A Hanukkah candle, gentle child.
Many are the memories
And the memories are brilliant.
A regiment of riders, mighty men,
If they appear before you,
Do not fear, gentle…