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 Song at the Sea
Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord. They said:
I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously;
Horse and driver He has hurled into the sea.
The Lord is my strength…
Song at the Sea (Exodus 15), Leningrad Codex
Song at the Sea (Exodus 15), Leningrad Codex, 1009 CE. The photo shows the first fourteen verses of the poem (Exodus 15:1–14) and a few prose verses from the end of the preceding chapter. The text of…
Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32), Aleppo Codex
Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32), Aleppo Codex, ca. 925 CE. The photo shows the beginning of the poem (Deuteronomy 32:1–14) and the prose verses from the end of the preceding chapter. The text of the…
A Secret Letter to London
The evening of 5 Heshvan, 5642 [October 28, 1881]
Tomorrow with the second post, a pamphlet will be sent to you with a responsum entitled Isaac’s Stream (Naḥal Yitsḥak), regarding a miserable agunah…
Responsum: On Women’s Rights to Divorce
Question: Some of the poor members of the nation in Egypt [do as follows]. When a man fights with his wife and their marriage is not working out, and the wife wants to divorce but the husband does not…
The Women Shopkeepers, or, Golde-Mine, the Abandoned Wife of Brod
In short, in addition to being affluent, our Reb Hoshea Heffler was also steeped in the holy books. He was a traditional Jew, who could not abide the maskilim, the enlightened ones. He always used to…
Corner of the Field
After a long stay in the city, I was glad to go out, to travel as far as the Sharon, full of eagerness for fields, colors, green light. But to my misfortune, I fell into a crowded bus, crammed…
Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages
This book is intended as a description of a “traditional society”—that is, a society that saw itself as based upon a body of knowledge and a set of values handed down to…
Transfiguration
In history class
I draw a Latin-American moustache
On Titus Aspasianus;
Miriam, who under her flannel shirt
Is beginning to show development,
Is making vulgar contours
Onto the sculpture of his bust…
Nostalgia
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget itself.Give us the land we have wandered in timeThrough foreign parts, far, so far and then,Every year at Passover we repeat the lineNext year…
Does the Jew Exist? Sartre’s Morality Play about Anti-Semitism
In considering Sartre’s conception of the Jew and his relation to anti-Semitism we must not forget that Reflections on the Jewish Question (published by Schocken as Anti-Semite and Jew) was written…
Europe and America
My father brought the emigrant bundle
of desperation and worn threads,
that in anxiety as he stumbles
tumble out distractedly;
while I am bedded upon soft green money
that grows like grass.
Thus…