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 Old Notebook
The filthy train lurched along the tracks, jolting my spine through the slats of the wooden seat.
I was thoughtful, my happiness mixed with vague regrets. Happiness? No, a deserter’s sense of hard-won…
A Woman of Her Age
Once a week, even now, Mrs Goffman makes that chauffeur drive her slowly down from the mountain, back to St Lawrence Boulevard and Rachel Street [in Montreal]; she doesn’t want any old cronies who…
The Language of Faith: Selected Jewish Prayers
“Prayer is to religion what thinking is to philosophy. The religious sense prays as the intellectual organ thinks.” Prayer, to carry this saying of Novalis a step further, is a significant…
Notes on the New Translation of the Torah
It has not always been easy to break with the more than two-thousand-year-old manner of translating the Hebrew Bible, the word-for-word manner. Thus in Gen. 14.1–2 (cf. vv…
The Kitchen
In Brownsville tenements the kitchen is always the largest room and the center of the household. As a child I felt that we lived in a kitchen to which four other rooms were annexed. My mother, a “home…
The Tenth Man
The Cabalist:Sexton, light the candles. [The Sexton lights each man’s candle. The Cabalist advances slowly to The Girl, who stands slackly, her body making small occasional jerking movements…
My Last Two Thousand Years
I was present at the last birth. My wife and I had done the natural childbirth exercises. We were ready. The doctor was kind and easy.
The child was born, my fourth child, a boy. After three girls…
Letter to Abigail Franks
Flat Bush, Saturday, 10 o’c[lock]., August 10th, [17]’81
My dear Abby: [ . . . ]
[ . . . ] By the by, few N.York ladies know how to entertain company in their own houses unless they introduce the card…
Sefer ha-zikaron (The Book of Memory)
I have written this down in connection with all that befell us during that year five thousand five hundred and sixty-nine [1809] here, in our holy community of Pressburg. Now an omen of this had…
Correspondence from the United States, 1859–1861
New York, October 17, [18]59
People are rather preoccupied with the internal politics of the country. The abortive attempt of [the abolitionist John] Brown and his accomplices, and their execution…
Scenes of Jewish Life in Alsace
After an absence of many years, I returned to Alsace in November 1856, in response to the invitation of an old friend. During this first and short visit, I was greatly moved in recovering all the…
The Jews of Barnow
“Well, as you know already, the story is about Esterka, the daughter of the Jew to whom this house belongs. She was ten years old when he came here, and tall of her age, with black hair and large blue…