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 Basel Program
The aim of Zionism is to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law.The Congress contemplates the following means to the attainment of this end:
- The promotion, on suitable…
Letter to Herzl from Zionists in Morocco
March 17, 190318 Adar, 5663Safi—May He Who is on high make its Foundation firm(Morocco)To His Honor, the Exalted President, Lover of His People, Glory of His Nation, Our Distinguished Lord, Dr. Theodo…
Moses Mendelssohn, the German and Jewish Philosopher
Moses Mendelssohn’s German Philosophy did not survive him and his generation of the German Aufklärer. As the leading German philosopher, apart from some psychological and aesthetical theories, he…
Letter to Mendele
Dedication to My Dearly Beloved Grandfather, Reb Mendalle Mocher SephorimTo my dear grandfather, greetings!Stempenyu, my first long novel, which I inscribe to you, is yours; not only because I have…
An Argument: On Expanding Our Literature
I hear it said: On the contrary, inasmuch as the things most essential for the life of a people have been forcibly taken from our people’s soul, and we stand miraculously in midair like the mem and…
A Hot Shabbat Day
It was Shabbat morning. I was still lying in bed. My mother was already up and awake, wearing her clean white headdress. The other bed opposite mine, where my mother would sleep, was already made…
Tenant Number 88
Some sort of strange, humid day. . . . Some sort of day with a ragged sun and low, dark clouds, like threads of smoke, already happened once before in the past: in distant years long ago, when our…
In the Footsteps of Literature
Our literature is like our people: most of it is planted in lands of the exile, and just a few seedlings, which have not yet developed, whose quality cannot be discussed, have begun to flourish in our…
Nicolo-Peccavi, or The Dreyfus Affair at Carpentras
It was, in fact, our aunt who had commissioned the bus. Madame Léa Josué Chanaan was our aunt and we called her Aunt Chanaan, just as we called her husband, Monsieur Josué Chanaan, our uncle, although…
The State of Yiddish Children’s Literature
In the past there were no children among Jews, only “little Jews without beards,” so neither was there any children’s literature. Boys in the traditional heder used to read Ḥumesh [The Pentateuch]…
Letter to Margaret Sanger on Birth Control
Chicago, Ill., 12/7/15 My dear Girl:The enclosed money order for $40.00 represents the forty dollars collected at my Birth Control Lecture for you. I am sure it will come very handy, as you must be…
Meetings and Partings, Friends and Strangers
I came to say good-bye. I was going away to the University of Missouri. My grandfather turned from the window at which he sat, looking across the lots at the parkway. To eyes used to…