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.
The Root and the Bough: The Epic of an Enduring People
For the past few years, both in France and Germany, I was awed by the valiant struggle of people who, though only recently liberated from indescribable cruelty, exhibited extraordinary powers of…
List of Interview Questions Pertaining to Jews
Do you think there is a Jewish problem? If yes, in what sense? Do you care about it?
Have you had any experience with Jews? What kind? Do you remember names of persons involved and other specific data…
There We Sat Down: Talmudic Judaism in the Making
Like other “holy men,” the rabbi played political, religious, and cultural roles. Just as the Zoroastrian Magus was involved in the administration of the local community, in the maintenance of cultic…
The Naked God: The Writer and the Communist Party
I asked about a certain Russian poet. All good writers are poets to one extent or another, but that is a way of saying something. It is something else and clearer, to say that the poet is a very…
Old Stock
Hester sat down quietly next to her mother, whose sewing went on and on, a mild substitute for conversation. For a while, Hester watched the long, important-looking shadows that encroached upon the…
A Thousand Clowns
Murray:People fall into two distinct categories. Miss Markowitz; people who like delicatessen, and people who don’t like delicatessen. A man who is not touched by the earthy lyricism of hot…
Memoirs of the Life of Daniel Mendoza
Few events of a similar kind ever attracted the attention of the public, in such a degree, as the contests between Mr. Humphreys and myself. The long correspondence which passed between us previous to…
A Union Soldier’s Passover
Passover preparations for a Civil War–era Union soldier included importing seven barrels of matzot and collecting weeds to substitute for the symbolic bitterness of horseradish.
The Tale of a Rabbi and His Only Son
Once there was a rabbi who had no children. Finally, he had an only son. He raised him and married him off. The son used to sit in an attic room and study in the manner of rich men and he always…
The Stolen Son: A Contemporary Tale
The Israelites spent the rest of the day celebrating this festival of thanksgiving in their homes as a second Purim, with tears of sadness and joy, and by the time the sun set, the…
Sefer ḥeshbon ha-nefesh (Book of Moral Accounting)
[ . . . ] 2. When you stroll along the riverbank, you find an entire plain filled with reeds and bulrushes, all of which are standing erect, one adjacent to the other, and none of them…
Responsa hatam Sofer, Orah hayim 36
Indeed, in the countries where we reside, where the gentile women walk about bareheaded, but our mothers did not go out like that and were most careful on that score, concerned as they were about…