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.
Our Renaissance
Ladies and gentlemen!
We can say that time has passed and pens have dried up. Misery is our destiny and the West utilizes it as a tool to ensure our silence. The West manages and shapes our destiny as…
Toward an Explanation of Our Ideology
Jewry, and religious Jewry in particular, has always attached prime importance to the rebuilding of Eretz Israel. The Hovevei Zion regarded it as a national duty; for the religious it was a divine…
Sephardi, Not Oriental
I have noticed the change of the word “Oriental” to “Sephardi” in the masthead of the latest issue of the journal [La Amerika], “Organ of the Judeo-Sephardi (and no longer Oriental) Colony of America…
One Literature in Two Languages
Some impassioned readers among us will not admit that our one and only literature has a double language. After the Czernowitz conference, one of our Hebrew writers (now living in America) swore…
Turkish Music in the Synagogue: Objections of a Rabbi
The sinyor Rav h"r Shaul had a strong aversion to the Turkish language to the extent that he would excommunicate anyone singing Turkish songs. Not only Turkish songs, but even a Jewish liturgical…
In the Golden Land
Would you, mama, believe if I told
That everything here is changed into gold,
That gold is made from iron and blood,
Day and night, from iron and blood?
—My son, from a mother you cannot hide—
A…
Aftergrowth
Behold I have not plowed nor have I planted,
I have not prayed for the rain.
And suddenly, see! My fields have grown
Sun-blessed grain instead of thistle.
Is it the aftergrowth of ancient produce,…
Fallen Leaves
Words forsaken—fallen leaves,
Let the wind scatter you,
And let me forget you.
I will remain like a wintry tree
Behind closed eyes, still
And silent.
Both the night will cradle me, ay-lu,
And the…
Once I Was Young
Once I was young, hung out
in doorways, listening to Socrates.
My closest pal, my lover
Had the finest chest in Athens.
Then came Caesar, and a world
glittering with marble—I
the last to go. For my…
The Weeping of Generations
On the white garments of my great-grandfather
the cross of the middle ages flames anew.
My great-grandfather sits at the seder,
holding a staff from a wild almond tree
to rouse the forefathers.
Not…
Alphabet Letters
In the Bronx, in Brooklyn and in New York City,
My cousins all have stores.
Seven cousins with seven stores, like commandments.
Business people with long lists of going bankrupt.
And my family-name…
Escape from Freedom
We see that the process of growing human freedom has the same dialectic character that we have noticed in the process of individual growth. On the one hand it is a process of growing strength and…