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.
Ḥeshek Shelomoh (Solomon’s Desire)
The book’s name: This book [Song of Songs] is called a “song,” a noun bearing several meanings. First, it denotes music, as in the verse: all the daughters of song (Ecclesiastes 12:4), which means…
Burning Holy Books
Holy books, said my friend, angry,
there’s no such thing. Books,
books: let them talk
to us about books.
It was a hot night.
At noon light rips
through the room, and everything’s clear:
over the…
The Song of the Humble
Music with a light Israeli/jazz groove starts playing. The percussions play along the scene in a question and answer routine as if they were the immigration officer Inquiehush meets…
Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy
[The text of this article is published without its accompanying notes.]If I were asked to characterize in a phrase the change that religious Jewry has undergone in the past generation, I would say…
How to Save American Jews
Over the past ten years, the American Jewish community has undergone a radical inner shift in mood, from buoyant optimism to deep anxiety about its future. […]
The present anxiety can be dated to the…
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…
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…
Woodcut no. 1
Tkhiyes-hameysim (The Resurrection of the Dead) is a dramatic poem by Moyshe Broderzon inspired by medieval Christian “mystery” (or “miracle”) plays that presented bible stories and were performed in…
The Egg That Disguised Itself
Poet and scholar Dan Pagis wrote and illustrated a children’s book about an egg, which, searching for an alternate identity, tries unsuccessfully to disguise itself as a flower, a mushroom, a clock…
Within the Walls
Scene: The living room of the Herming family house. The walls of the home contain valuable paintings by many of the greatest nineteenth-century Danish national romantic painters.State…
Codex Artaud VII
Codex Artaud VII is one of a series of thirty-four scrolls that Nancy Spero based on the writings of Antonin Artaud, a writer and theater director famous for conceptualizing the “Theatre of Cruelty.”…
Medal Commemorating the Opening of the Dutch Jewish Orphanage in Amsterdam
This bronze medal by Jacques Elion commemorates the opening of a Jewish orphanage in Amsterdam. The Hebrew inscription reads: “Orphanage.” It was customary for Jewish communities to issue medals to…