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.
Return, Israel
A statement of reproof and a reminder and warning and a correction to our brothers, the Jews of Tunis, may the Almighty maintain it, amen, may God preserve them and sustain them, written by the dayyan…
The Open Grave
Crowds of people had been gathering since dawn at the morgue next to the city hospital. Drowsy, shivering, in damp gray clothes, they warmed themselves by huddling in one another’s breath. Their faces…
Day Grows Darker
Day grows darker
And darker.
Mobs are advancing on the town,
Mobs clotted with blood,
Made remorseless by killing children,
Lustfully they advance,
To rip off heads,
Feeble, melancholy heads.
They…
The History of Borsszem Janko (Johnny Peppercorn)
I was lying in bed sick when, on January 5th, 1868, the first issue came out. Understandably, the party line and the competition tried to alienate from me János Jankó, the illustrator of the…
Di shvue (The Oath)
Brothers and sisters—all working poor
Wherever you might be scattered on earth
This banner’s now waiting for you, together.
Waving, wrathful, this flag is blood red.
We swear! We swear by the…
Pass On, You Lonely Grandfathers . . .
Pass on, pass on, you lonely grandfathers,
With frightened beards covered with snow,
In the last sorrow, in the final grief
You’re still here, the final witnesses.
Pass on, pass on, you lonely…
Erotica et Rustica
1.
Eyner hot lib a kale mit a sakh gelt, der anderer hot lib a kale on a hemd.
Some like a bride with a lot of money, others like a bride without a stitch of clothes.
Khuts…
Grave of the Bride and Groom
In many shtetls throughout Podolye and Volhynia we often find a mound next to the synagogue. Surrounded by a traditional cemetery fence, the mound is known as the Grave for the Bride and Groom. And…
Ghetto Folklore
The Führer inquires of General Franco, “Comrade, how did you solve the Jewish problem?”
Franco answers, “I instituted the yellow badge.”
“That’s nothing,” says Hitler. “I imposed tributes…
An Act of Affirmation
It is traditional to begin a new magazine with brave declarations. If we do not, we trust we shall be forgiven.
We begin at a moment heavy with a sense of human destiny. Every schoolboy who listens to…
Can Heaven Be Void?
I am in hiding in a loft over a stable, in a village, with good people. The risk of death hovers over me, as it does over all Jews these days, and the slightest lapse of vigilance on my…