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.
Palestine and World Jewry
This will be the first of my addresses before the Zionist Congresses to deal not with the various questions involved in the upbuilding of Palestine but with the significance of…
The Third Party Convention
The Bund has inscribed on its banner the demand for equal civil rights for the Jews. At the Convention the opinion was expressed that Jewish Social Democracy deals with the needs of the Jewish…
Angels of Peace
For many years we have awaited your arrival on our soil. We waited, as we believed that your arrival fulfills our eminent, longing of millennia. To our great pleasure, the joyous day has arrived…
Hebraism and Universalism in Hebrew Literature
Mr. [Israel Ḥayim] Taviov says: “Those who vehemently demand a large and broad literature in the Hebrew language, comprising all branches of wisdom and science—they are the ultranationalists of the…
A Reply to Mr. Sholem Aleichem
Precisely in the case of a new and difficult question like “Jewish folk-music,” [ . . . ] it is necessary to establish as much as possible [its] specific, objective characteristics . . . You make fun…
Self-Criticism
The skeptics and rebels who have just recently appeared in our literature say: What? The Jews have survived? Yes, it’s true they have survived. But, my friends, survival alone is not yet a virtue…
Feminist Manifesto
The feminist movement as at present instituted is InadequateWomen if you want to realize yourselves—you are on the eve of a devastating psychological upheaval—all your pet illusions must be unmasked…
Studies in Judaism
The purpose in view was, as may easily be gathered from the essays themselves, to bring under the notice of the English public a type of men produced by the Synagogue of the…
Ghetto Twilight
An infinite weariness comes into the faces of the old tenements,
As they stand massed together on the block,
Tall and thoughtful silent,
In the enveloping twilight.
Pensively,
They eye each other…
Responsum: On Prostitutes’ Gifts to the Synagogue
Concerning the matter of prostitutes from the daughters of Israel—far be it from our straight paths—who dedicate a new ark curtain or Torah scroll cover, it is permissible from a legal point of view…
Day and Night
Day and night—
Shivering, we wait in bitter day
For moonlit night,
For the caressing moon.
Quivering, we wait in angry night—
For the sunlit day,
For the warming sun.
Day and night—
We must loom…
Transformation
Year after year, that cruel monster in the heart
growing, sense of guardedness expanding.
Year after year—generations’ blessing
gouged like a needle into the body.
I have wrenched it with irons…