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 Message of the Scrolls
In late November 1947, in what had once been a quiet suburb of Jerusalem, I first heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I was at the time Chief of Operations of Haganah, the Jewish underground self-defence…
House of Dolls
[ . . . ] There are moments when the pile of worn clothing in the center of the rag room bestirs itself suddenly like a volcano and sends a pervasive fear throughout the large room. The…
Saul and Johanna
All of a sudden, Grandmother’s empty burial plot is occupied. They finally returned mother to father’s side. One tree spreads its shadow over both their graves. Grandmother, too, finally gets what she…
Have Faith the Day Will Come
This day is our war, my sister,
So I am far away from here.
Please keep our rendez-vous
In our tiny kitchen
Before my usual chair
Fill a glass of wine
And treat it as if I am
Sitting across from…
1923–1958
And I didn’t have time.
Now it is certain
I didn’t have time.
Half my life.
It is now allowed
To be silent.
My shadows grow
With the stride of the sun.
I am the man
Who didn’t have time.
The Grandfather I Once Had
Every day when his mind was at ease,
Relieved of the need to tell us about the countries he’d seen,
He would raise his hands high above our heads,
Appealing on our behalf before the Almighty to let…
The Syrian-African Rift: Six Poems
The sages say, that at the time the Syrian-African Rift
occurred, the celestial inhabitants were not
up-to-date. Each man was engaged
at his trade. In grinding…
Sefer hitavkut (Book of Struggle)
You should know and believe me, and understand, that I did not become zealous against the scoffers for my own glory, or for the glory of my father’s house, but that it was zeal for the Almighty that…
Givat ha-moreh [Commentary to Maimonides’ Moreh nevukhim, Guide for the Perplexed]
The telos (takhlit) of man’s activities, in the aspect (behinah) of having will and choice, is the ultimate human good (ha’hatslahah ha’enoshi’it). This excellence necessarily comes after the…
The Rigors of Jewish Historiography
The historiography of no people is so beset with the pretentious and condemnatory views of dilettantes as is that of the Israelites, which everyone fancies to know from the relevant sources. Thus, no…
Impressions of the Prague Revolution
But I want to go on recounting how the Prague movement developed, and what made the revolution, which brought so many impressive, great, and noble things to light everywhere, made everything in Prague…
Song Settings for the Poet Lord Byron’s Hebrew Melodies
Hebrew Melodies was a collaboration between the English poet Lord Byron (1788–1824) and his friend, the Jewish composer Isaac Nathan. It is a collection of thirty poems by the poet, set to music by…