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 Holy Fire
The Holy Fire, one of the greatest examples of religious resistance in the Warsaw ghetto, explores a theological explanation for Jewish suffering during the Holocaust.
Yizkor, 1943
An elegy to the Jews deported from the Warsaw ghetto from a Jew hiding on the “Aryan” side of the city.
What Makes Sammy Run?
Three weeks before Sammy’s thirteenth birthday Papa came in too upset to eat.“Tonight when I come out of schule the rabbi wants to talk to me. ‘Max, my heart is like lead to tell you this,’ he says,…
Trip Home
It was close to Passover. In the house, Passover was already present. But Father was not in a holiday mood. He looked at nobody and even his appearance changed. A yellow cast covered his face.
He had…
Father and Son
Now in the suburbs and the falling light
I followed him, and now down sandy road
Whiter than bone-dust, through the sweet
Curdle of fields, where the plums
Dropped with their load of ripeness, one by…
The Dreadful Angel
The dreadful angel in me is invisible
today, his screeching almost still.
You startle at its whisper. Is it
someone come to pay a visit
or a grasshopper tapping at the sill?
It’s he. Oh, he is…
Essays on the Stories of Shai Agnon
In S. Y. Agnon’s comprehensive literary project, we must also see A Guest for the Night as an epic expansion on one central subject, whose tones burst out and rise from most of…
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…