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.
Libes briv (Love Letter)
I must first briefly describe human nature. Namely, we people contain within us the four fundamental [elements] like all other species of creation that are below us or inferior to us. It…
Tokhaḥat megula (The Admonition of Magula)
Here is a song that I created,
well composed and uncomplicated;
you can call it a song or call it a dirge.
I’d like to tell you some of my troubles:
some men have problems by…
Netivot ‘olam (Eternal Paths)
We read in Proverbs:If you make your ear attentive to wisdomAnd your mind open to discernment;If you call to understandingAnd cry aloud to discernment,If you seek it as you do silverAnd…
Y’minah, Y’minah
“Y’minah, Y’minah,” c. 1941. Photo credit: The Dorot Jewish Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.
Bust of Moses Mendelssohn
This sculpture of Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) was created by Tassaert, a distinguished sculptor of the day. Mendelssohn sat for him, and copies of the bust were later made for Mendelssohn’s closest…
Minyan
Three Russians who didn’t understand Hebrew sat in the back of the synagogue. One was missing an arm. Two Polish Jews sat in front of them. One had his place by the partition so that he could stretch…
The Last War or the Third, That Is the Question: A Conversation in Kibbutz Ein-Shemer
Avishai:There’s nothing joyful about the guys who returned from the war. I don’t have the feeling that this is the last time that the people sitting here will put on uniform. Right after the war the…
The Rabbi’s Son
Do you remember Zhitomir, Vasily? Do you remember the River Teterev, Vasily, and that night in which the Sabbath, the young Sabbath, crept along the sunset crushing the stars with the heel of her red…
My First Goose
Savitsky, the commander of the Sixth Division, rose when he saw me, and I was taken aback by the beauty of his gigantic body. He rose—his breeches purple, his crimson cap cocked to the side, his…
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…
How Things Were Done in Odessa
I was the one who began.
“Reb Arye-Leib,” I said to the old man. “Let’s talk about Benya Krik. Let’s talk about his lightning-quick beginning and his terrible end. Three shadows block the path of my…