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.
Before Conscription
Right after Passover, with the first rays of the gentle summer sun, a new worry erupted for the Jewish inhabitants of all the small towns—the call-up for military service. The “young toughs” began to…
Gedali
On the eve of the Sabbath I am always tormented by the dense sorrow of memory. In the past on these evenings, my grandfather’s yellow beard caressed the volumes of Ibn Ezra. My old grandmother, in her…
The Common Names of Plants
The common names of plants used by different nations and languages were not coined by chance alone. If we examine the origin of these names, we find they are based on ancient legend and that the…
Bondy Jr.
At the Realschule fathers and mothers were lined up in single file in the director’s room. Parents who took the occasion very seriously appeared in couples with their young hopefuls. The director…
Letter to Rachel Bluwstein
Kinneret, 12 Nissan, 5674 [8 April 1914]
There was a time when the writing of a letter, like the receiving of a letter, was in itself like a holiday for me. I lived in letters—as I told you once and…
Making Jam
Aunt Feiga is making jam today. She has to hurry. The raspberry season will soon be over. So Aunt Feiga is all in a swivet; she has bought a huge bowl of raspberries and fifteen pounds of sugar and is…
Higher School for Jewish Studies
The problem concerning the establishment of a Higher School for Jewish studies, which was recently raised by the Society for the Promotion of Culture Among the Jews of Russia (OPE), should be…
Battles
It is often said that among the Gentiles there are men of noble lineage whose features and outward appearance show that nothing but the purest and most refined aristocratic blood…
The Sexual Life
Love is a net that nature spreads out in order to multiply humankind. (Love also exists among animals.) Only complete love is true love. True love does not have any higher or lower…
Awake and Sing!
One year later, a Sunday afternoon. The front room. Jacob is giving his son Mordecai [Uncle Morty] a haircut, newspapers spread around the base of the chair. Moe is reading a newspaper, l…
The Open Grave
Crowds of people had been gathering since dawn at the morgue next to the city hospital. Drowsy, shivering, in damp gray clothes, they warmed themselves by huddling in one another’s breath. Their faces…
Day Grows Darker
Day grows darker
And darker.
Mobs are advancing on the town,
Mobs clotted with blood,
Made remorseless by killing children,
Lustfully they advance,
To rip off heads,
Feeble, melancholy heads.
They…