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.
Feuilleton: On Varshavsky’s Jewish Folk Songs
What do we call folk songs? Of course, these are the songs sung by the people. The songs can either come from unknown authors of the ancient, forgotten past . . . or these can be recently written…
Assimilation or Polonization?
Assimilation, taken literally, means making things similar to each other, and in this concrete instance refers to a desire for the assimilation of Jews in terms of language, culture, and customs to…
The Hebrew Book
Literary-minded Jews have long been perplexed by a strange phenomenon. Our literature which is thousands of years old, comprises tens of thousands of volumes, and represents the many creative forces…
Sermon on B’nai Mitzvah Celebrations
A male child becomes obligated to observe the commandments at the age of thirteen years and one day. Therefore, on the first day of his fourteenth year, a father grasps his son in his hand and says,…
A Tale of Rebbe Yisroel of Ruzhin
Our master, the holy rabbi, told a tale of the Ba‘al Shem Tov (may his memory be for a blessing to the life of the world to come!). There was once a matter involving great danger to the human life of…
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…