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 Sum of Suffering
The sum of suffering is greater
Than the sum of happiness.
That’s what a philosopher said
Long ago, years and years.
The waves of suffering wash away
Happiness’s tiny isle.
The bridge of suffering…
At the Road
The whole day
In the roads’ realm
The whole day
Facing only wind
Just a narrow ditch between road and shoulder
Just young lids between sun and eye
What in the world
Can be more beautiful?
Translated…
The Good Girl
[The first act is set in Tuscany in September. The second and third acts are set in Rome in January.]
Aesthetic Culture
The world is full of armies.
But that is not what will kill us.
Béla Balázs
If there is culture today, it can only be an aesthetic culture. If one wants to raise seriously the question whether there…
Nationalism and Jewish Emancipation
Those who are engrossed by the Jewish problem and strive to resolve it approach it from the most various points of view, save that which alone would be logical—I mean the Jewish point of view.
Indeed…
The National Question and Class Struggle
In order to live, men must produce. In order to produce, they must combine their efforts in a certain way. Man does not as an individual struggle with nature for existence. History knows man only as a…
The Theoretical System of Marx in the Light of Recent Criticism
One of the most amusing features of modern Marx-criticism is the grave discussion by the critics, of the question whether or not Marx…
Our Demands: A Ladino Socialist Manifesto
What are the demands of the organized proletariat on this day [May 1]?
Above all the eight-hour workday. With eight-hour days we would gain work for thousands of unemployed men; we would gain time to…
Speech: On Jews and Nationalism
Are we always and in all circumstances united with our surroundings, so that only the synagogue, rather than society, attests to separation?
Do not believe that in such unity and cooperation I mean…
Feuilleton: On Varshavsky’s Jewish Folk Songs
What do we call folk songs? Of course, these are the songs sung by the people. The songs can either come from unknown authors of the ancient, forgotten past . . . or these can be recently written…
Assimilation or Polonization?
Assimilation, taken literally, means making things similar to each other, and in this concrete instance refers to a desire for the assimilation of Jews in terms of language, culture, and customs to…
The Hebrew Book
Literary-minded Jews have long been perplexed by a strange phenomenon. Our literature which is thousands of years old, comprises tens of thousands of volumes, and represents the many creative forces…