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 Whore’s Lament
Where are the merchants who used to chase after me to purchase my favours? O malevolent Time! Nowadays, they abhor my company; when I call for them, there is no answer. How has my merchandise been…
Shreds of Earth
On a night like this if a shudder were to shake your flesh as though a nightmare
had severed your sleep I could have risen and quietly walked to the kitchen
to write you a poem that would bring you…
Parnassus
Technically I was a man.This spindly squeaky thing with the Adam’s-apple accent was, by virtue of being thirteen and bar-mitzvahed, a technical man.And so the phone call came: they needed a tenth for…
Lamelekh Seal Impression with Four-winged Scarab Beetle
Some lamelekh impressions, like this one from Lachish, have a four-winged scarab beetle as their central image. The scarab beetle was an important mythological symbol in Egypt, associated with Khepri…
Words of Ahiqar
Words of Ahiqar, Elephantine, 5th century BCE. This Aramaic manuscript contains the oldest-known version of Ahiqar, a wisdom book that includes proverbs similar to those found in the biblical book of…
The 1948 Generation: Myth, Profile and Memory
Berl Katznelson did much to foster the awareness of “Yizkor” and its literature in the twenty years after Tel Hai, through an explicit reference to the chain of Jewish martyrology and heroism and a…
No Exit from This Jewry
I—a Jewess—am by definition not a member of the species, or: why should a Jewess not have problems with public assistance and with her children? The postwar German Jew, to the extent that such a being…
A Dispirited Rebellion
Much has been written about the split that occurred in Zionist ideology after the removal of the immediate existential threat in the Six Day War—a split that grew increasingly wide with the Yom Kippur…
Egypt’s Defeat and Conversion
The “Egypt” Pronouncement.
Mounted on a swift cloud,
The Lord will come to Egypt;
Egypt’s idols shall tremble before Him,
And the heart of the Egyptians shall sink within them.
“I will incite…
What Was the Holocaust?
Is the Holocaust definable? Is it desirable to define it? After all, definitions are abstractions from reality and are useful only insofar as they help us to better understand the world around us. Any…
A Call for Repentance
Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God,
For you have fallen because of your sin.
Take words with you
And return to the Lord.
Say to Him:
“Forgive all guilt
And accept what is good;
Instead of bulls…