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.
After the Vision
How can I hew out a song when the hammer of my senses is coated with rust? How can I play the lute when my hand is ensnared in fetters of fear? For my heart has entered the gazelle’s paved [palace]…
The Innkeeper’s Love Song
O you paragon of glory and grace, listen to the call of Papos and his cry! He is bellowing like a bull, braying at you like a donkey, for you are his cow and his she-ass. His heart is already parched…
Ballad of Repentance
Dedicated to the Great Lord of Hosts.
Supreme and merciful God,
my affection to Your lofty and just compassion
dedicates to You today
the exordia of my muse.
Protect, immense Lord,
my coarse and…
Hear O Israel
When we were the persecuted
I was one of you
How can I remain one
when you become the persecutors?
Your longing was
to become like other nations
who murdered you
Now you have become like them
You…
For Ethel Rosenberg
convicted, with her husband,
of “conspiracy to commit
espionage”; killed in the
electric chair June 19, 1953
Lamentation of the Borderguard
I do not want to be a borderguard, said the borderguard.
I don’t want to be a bodyguard.
I don’t want to be a guardian angel.
I don’t want to be a guide.
I want not to be a grinder.
I don’t want to…
Model Bed
Since chairs and beds were valuable items and not found in average homes (people usually sat on the floor and slept on mats), it is possible that terra-cotta models like this one from Lachish…
Hard Love
She is sitting silently. Zvi looks out the window and lights a cigarette.
Hannah:I don’t think smoke’s very good for the baby…
Zvi:Sorry. (He puts the cigarette out.)
Hannah:I don’t…
The Holocaust and the Vicissitudes of Jewish Identity
It appears rather strange that Jewish intellectuals, more than three decades after World War II, feel called upon now more than ever before to articulate for West Germans what it has meant and means…
On the Place: Israeli Anthropology
The Israeli existence is new and experimental. Israelism comes from Zionism, based on the idea of the Jewish people’s return to its place. Israel is a Jewish place. Use of the term Jewish in…
The Other and Almost the Same
What, exactly, has the argument been about—apart from the words themselves? Have the Jews and the blacks been fighting all this time over political spoils? Not especially. Over economic interests…
Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History
In 1913 a Jewish girls’ school in Vilna called Yehudiyah, which provided supplementary education for girls aged seven to eighteen, published a publicity pamphlet in Yiddish…