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.
Prepared
A searing poetic response to a 1916 survey, by Martha Gruening, a tireless advocate for women’s rights and African American rights.
Yontev-bletlekh: “Why Is This Night Different (Ma nishtanah)?”
Passover is coming soon and I ask you to invite me to the seder. Let me in!I won’t cost you very much. I don’t eat kneydlekh! Don’t serve me maror, the bitter herbs—I was born with them!Do not ask me…
Rosh Hashanah Sermon for the Jewish Father
Assimilation in our day has spoiled and distorted the essence of our festivals. It has turned Rosh Hashanah into a day of festivity filled with the sound of music and song. However, the first day of…
The Mind of the Orient
All philosophy—understood in the widest sense as awe before and research into the inexplicable secrets and the inner coherence of the world—is meaningful not for the sake of knowledge but as a form of…
Ghingeli
Oh, Ghingeli, my bleeding heart,
Who is this guy who dreams in snow
And drags his feet like a pair of logs
In the middle of the street at night?
It is the rascal Moyshe-Leyb,
Who will freeze to…
Address to West Central Jewish Working Girls’ Club
Today for you all there is an opportunity more important than any that has ever before been given to you.
The boys out in France and Egypt are learning the value of their homes. We believe that they…
Here Lives the Jewish People
The towering life of the towering city
Is burning in white fires.
And in the streets of the Jewish East side
The whiteness of the fires burns even whiter.
I like to stroll in the burning frenzy of…
Moscow Night, End of December 1934
It’s hard to be clever these nights,
And useless to be modern.
Useless to smile knowingly and observe with melancholy
The language bastardisms of history:
“The government of the Republic is delivered…
Summer 1937
For my child, today, it is so easy
to make the awful discovery, that people kill
and are killed: both things and people
speak the language of the red angel.
My child asks me: Why are people being…
Attempt to Explain a Mellah
September 7, 1912. The French enter Marrakesh. Marching through the Djema el Fna Square, surrounded by his general staff, Colonel Mangin is surprised to hear, amid the discordant noises of the crowd…
Parting Words
We know that a writer has no power except in the pen. Nevertheless there are times when it behooves us to alter the ordinary manner of expression. There are times when the author, too, must depart…