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.
Saving Christian Books from Fire
[With regard to] the blank folios and the [Torah] scrolls of [the] heretics, one does not rescue them from the fire. R. Yosi says: During the week, one cuts the names [of God contained] therein and…
Mishnah Avot
5. He [Rabban Gamaliel, the son of Judah the Prince] used to say: A boor is not sin-fearing, and a person of lax observance is not pious. A shy person cannot learn, and an impatient person cannot…
Yerushalmi Gittin
If he transgressed and annulled [the divorce document]? Let us hear from the following: If he annulled, it is annulled, the words of Rabbi. Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel says: He can neither annul it nor…
Genesis Rabbah on the Binding of Isaac
55:2. The Lord tries the righteous, [but His soul despises the wicked and the lover of violence] (Psalm 11:5). R. Jonathan taught: The potter does not test defective vessels, for he hardly has to give…
Rededication of the Temple
And now that the generals of Antiochus’ armies were defeated so many times, Judah assembled the people together and told them that after these many victories that God had given them, they should go up…
Herod’s Arrival in Rome and Appointment as King of Judaea
His ship came into serious distress off Pamphylia, and most of the cargo had to be jettisoned, after which it could just limp to safety in Rhodes, an island deeply traumatized by the war with Cassius…
Herod Agrippa I
Now when Agrippa arrived at Puteoli, he wrote a letter to Tiberius Caesar, who was then living in Capreae, informing him that he had come so far in…
Nero Appoints Vespasian to Suppress Revolt
News of the reverses in Judaea naturally came as a fearful shock to Nero, though he concealed it well. His public reaction was one of dismissive irritation, claiming as he did that what had happened…
Triumphal Procession in Rome
While it was still night all the military had marched out under their officers by companies and cohorts, and taken up their position, which was not on this occasion round the gates of the Upper Palace…
Emperor Justinian and the Nea Church
Such were the works of the Emperor Justinian in Cilicia. And in Jerusalem he dedicated to the Mother of God a shrine with which no other can be compared. This is called by the natives the “New Church”…
Jews and the Sasanian Queen
At this time, it so happened that the queen fell ill. Since she was favorably inclined to the enemies of the cross, the Jews, they told her, making their customary false accusation: “The sisters of…
Alexander Bows to the High Priest
On the twenty-fifth day of [the month of Tevet], [known as] the day of Mount Gerizim [on which it is forbidden to eulogize], on that day the Samaritans asked Alexander the Macedonian [for permission]…