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.
Jerusalem
See the Mount of Olives and the Greek monastery.
Minarets and cupolas abound,
Squares of yellow houses like honeycomb.
The valley of Josephat, white, dry fields—
There in the dell, where it is…
Shtetl
A visitor came to the shtetl,
A stranger, with unrest in his step . . .
No-one recognized his unrest. No-one asked him:
“Stranger, are you weary?”
Across the blue sky the evening drew its curtain…
And Cain Spoke unto Abel His Brother
(Genesis 4:8)
for D. G., my uncle
Abel, brother, yesterday the primal crime awoke me:
I had murdered your snow-white dreams and damned I was urging myself
endlessly on down the night-darkening…
In Central Park
Who is to blame that I don’t see your tree,
Garden in snow, my garden in snow.
Who is to blame that I don’t see your tree—
When a woman goes out for a stroll in your snow,
Her bosom rising and…
The Voice
Over and over, yes, over and over,
I shook the pinions of my anger,
Again and again you broke faith with me,
And I stormed at your crop of iniquity.
But over and over, and over and over,
Your songs…
A Stubborn Back—and Nothing More
Come, let us hide ourselves in caves,
in stony crevices, in graves
where stretched full length on the hard ground
we lie, backs up and faces down.
We shall not record, we shall not say
why we’ve…
The God of Israel
The God of Israel is not rich.
I saw the Sistine Chapel,
Notre-Dame, the Cathedral of Cologne—
You can feast your eyes on them, you can enjoy.
The God of Israel is stingy.
He won’t fill his museum…
Jews and Arabs in Morocco
Among the Jews of Europe, acute feelings of difference always fade with the passage of time. The school, the army, and politics have a unifying force; integration comes about through cultural channels…
To Be of Use
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek…
Lament of the Daughter of Judah
O God of Hosts, our God from of old,
Was it for this that You selected our ancestors from days of yore
That You took their descendants as an inheritance for Yourself
To set them up as the target of…
Commandment II
Commandment II is from a series of forged-iron sculptures Kirili began in the late 1970s. They are among his best-known works and reflect his strong interest in religious concepts and ancient texts…
The Diary of Anne Frank (Kristallnacht)
The brothers Mike and Doug Starn often include materials such as Plexiglas, wood, nails, transparency film, scotch tape, wax, and pushpins in their photo-based mixed media works. One of their goals…