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 Elementary School Teacher
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.
—Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a…
In the Vast Silence of Manhattan
[A room in early evening shadows. It is the room of a New York suburban working girl.][Time: The early Thirties. A bell strikes eight times, probably from the bell tower of a nearby church. Rosie is…
Dreams Older Than Memory
The alphabet doesn’t have enough letters, you say, to form the names of so many inexpressible feelings, unexpressed for lack of words, and I say to you that we don’t have enough life, that too much…
Blessed Is the Match: The Story of Jewish Resistance
Why do I begin with the parachutists? Were I to trace the story of Jewish resistance and rescue chronologically, I would have to use a different order. I would have to begin with the gradual…
What Can We Do about Fagin? The Jew-Villain in Western Tradition
The real start of the myth of the Jew with the Knife in English literature goes back to the tale, already hundreds of years old, which Chaucer puts into the mouth of his Prioress, a character faintly…
My Spiritual Autobiography
With the passing of childhood and the waning of the impatient eagerness of adolescence, I was rapidly realizing that this was neither the best of all possible worlds, nor one that the optimism of late…
The Naked and the Dead
The old man Moshe Sefardnick sits in the rear of the place on a camp stool. There is never any work for him to do and indeed he is too old for it, too bewildered. The old man has never been able to…
The Loudest Voice
There is a certain place where dumb-waiters boom, doors slam, dishes crash; every window is a mother’s mouth bidding the street shut up, go skate somewhere else, come home. My voice is the loudest. […
Letter to His Parents after His Conversion
Certainly, dearest parents, I know what is commonly the result of the influence of education and of misunderstood religion, but is it possible that you could hate your son because he harbors other…
Letter of Rabbinic Appointment to the City of Posen
When the leaders of the people were assembled, all the tribes of Israel together, on the evening of the twenty-first day of Adar 5572, to oversee the affairs of the general community and the needs of…
Igrot Meshulam (Epistles of Meshulam)
Sivan, 5529 Livorno [1769]
In the name of G-d, the G-d of mercy!
In such measure as light exceeds darkness, such is the superiority of the people of this country over the people of Spain…
The Love of Zion
Azrikam grew in his father’s house like a thorn, becoming uglier as he grew. Tamar, however, grew more beautiful day by day. The contrast between these two children was not only noticeable in their…