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.
On the Election of Women
I was honored to receive your request to express my opinion on the current question of electing women to the Jewish representative assembly…
Mission-Work among the Unenlightened Jews
In our great city of New York, no practical question concerning the welfare of Judaism is of more vital importance than that of mission-work among the Jews. [ . . . ] The great every-day phrase, “we…
The Counterfeit Culture and the Sought-After Culture
What is the sought-after culture? What are all the great ideals, all of man’s lofty ideals? What does man seek in life?
If only man knew what he should seek in life! All great ideals were only created…
Protest: For the Hebraicization of the Technion
Honorable Editor,Please publish the following remarks in your newspaper:We, the students in the upper classes of the Palestinian high schools, sent a protest as follows to Messrs Shmaryahu Levi[n], Ah…
When a Jew Can Work during the Sabbath: A Salonikan Rabbi on War and Labor
I have been considering for a long while responding with my opinion on the law and the truth concerning occasional improper events that occur thus. For years wars have raged between kings, as is well…
Red Blossoms
On this ancient trunk
With hanging branches, gray flax
I’m a young branch.
To grow: my sole passion.
Green shoot
rising
high
to the bright,
I’ll bring red blossoms
to argue:
World, I’m right!
From…
Tefillah
Oh my God, my God,
Mighty One of my existence,
have mercy on Your lost son
who has wandered from the ancestral path
and, exiled to cold and unfamiliar climes,
sought to be close to You,
but has not…
All Is God’s
Man has separated lust and sorrow.
But God holds them together like day and night.
I know lust. I know intense suffering.
I praise God’s one name.
Translated by David Soeterndorp.
To My Land
I have not sung to you, my land,
And I have not glorified your name
With acts of valor,
With booty of battles;
My hands have planted just a tree
On the quiet Jordan shores,
My legs have trodden down…
Two Fatherlands
O, if through thy eyes, like through sea waves,
My love could sail like a ship,
Long ago with full sails I would have boldly
Struck to your heart, like to the Holy Land.
If you light up for me in…
Yom HaKippurim
Do you know who turns and returns?
Do you know the meaning of Atonement?
Do you know who watched for you by night,
Late, and in the early morning light?
Do you know who verges on Atonement?
Do you…
Bolted Room
Dark, bolted room.
Thick air soaked with fear and danger.
Fabius Lind—eye to eye
With a bewildering woman.
Fabius Lind is small and trembling,
The woman is big and growing—and pouring out
Odors of a…