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.
Indoor Sukkah
Wexler is an artist and architect who also makes furniture. Over the years, he has often reinvented the sukkah, the booth in which Jews eat meals during Sukkot, an autumn holiday commemorating the…
Lev tov (A Good Heart): Ten Commandments for the Married Woman
This is the story of a queen who gave her daughter in marriage to a young king and then gave her the following instructions, inasmuch as she was about to be married. Since she was sending the daughter…
Tif’eret Yisra’el (The Beauty of Israel)
Since animals do not use these faculties [strength, speed, or cunning] for the purpose of [gaining] their livelihood, this shows that that which a man does with the strength of his body, and the sweat…
Tekhine imohos (Women’s Supplication of the Matriarchs)
Riboyne shel oylem, Almighty God, You created heaven and earth and all creatures with great compassion within six days and with only ten words. And on the seventh day, which is shabes koydesh, You…
Tsurat bet ha-mikdash (Shape of the Temple Sanctuary)
The Lord to the prophet Ezekiel (may he rest in peace): you, son of man, show the House to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities; and let them measure the…
Introduction: Ladino Translation of the Bible
The Master of the Universe gave us the holy and blessed law so that we would enjoy l’olam haba [the world to come], so that we would know and see the light of eternal life. Study and a good…
The Portrait of Susannah
Although a beautiful shock of golden hair swings across her forehead
And love finds nourishment in her eyes
The chaste Susannah never strays from the right path
And harbors not one thought without…
Sreyfe-lid (The Song about the Burning)
Nothing else makes me really rage
as when a poor man does something [wrong]
he is lost here and there
everyone would happily drink his blood.
But what the rich do here
is always all right
people let…
The Ass’s Complaint
Why is my back loaded with fine flour, while in my mouth there is no bread at all, but only straw? I drink well-water, though I carry wine. And the stick goes on fracturing my skull!
I live in rubble…
The Story of Amīnā and His Wife
Listen, my friends, pay attention!
Be silent, do not restrain me,
Nor say, “That fellow Amīānā’s been unfaithful,
His heart and tongue in two directions pull;
If not, why did he leave his native…
Europe
I have always backed off from the word.
In the Thirties Europe meant French. But was it only then? Not in earlier centuries? A bloody lesson learned that Europe was Balmazújváros as well as Notre…
Mother’s Day, Coney Island: Metropolitan Jewish Geriatric Home
And veins web her temples,
and my father pins on the orchid,
and my card names her the best mother.
But Alzheimer’s or arteriosclerosis (the end is the same)
praises him ad nauseum,
but accuses my…