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.
On Otto Weininger’s Sex and Character
When a woman has within herself as much of what is masculine as a man has within himself of what is feminine—i.e., what he lacks in Masculinity, then in their sexual union the divided parts of M and F…
Isadora Duncan
“Miss Duncan? The dancer? What is that—ballet?” No, it is not ballet. Missing here are the two predominant elements that make up modern ballet: there is neither dance technique nor women wearing…
Ghetto Folklore
The Führer inquires of General Franco, “Comrade, how did you solve the Jewish problem?”
Franco answers, “I instituted the yellow badge.”
“That’s nothing,” says Hitler. “I imposed tributes…
An Act of Affirmation
It is traditional to begin a new magazine with brave declarations. If we do not, we trust we shall be forgiven.
We begin at a moment heavy with a sense of human destiny. Every schoolboy who listens to…
Can Heaven Be Void?
I am in hiding in a loft over a stable, in a village, with good people. The risk of death hovers over me, as it does over all Jews these days, and the slightest lapse of vigilance on my…
The Nazarene
“‘Do you want me to release to you your King of the Jews?’ asked Pilate of the multitude.
“‘What is that? What does he say?’
“‘The Procurator asks whom shall he release to you for the festival: Bar…
A Contract
Things were looking pretty bleak, when my wife’s prewar acquaintance brought a ray of hope into our small room.
If you too were an artist, you might be able to appreciate how impatiently my wife and I…
Cain and Abel
Dost thou sleep, my brother Abel,
That thou art so wonderfully fair?
Never have I seen thee
As beautiful before.
Does the beauty lie in my ax,
Or is it, perhaps, in thee?
Before the day is done,
Spe…
Nights
All those things whose names I hushed
in secret, I meet in the night’s abyss.
I face the dark. Alert, remembering. Silently,
again I’ll let you in—my friends, my beloved dead.
And here you are as…
Song of the Murdered Jewish People
And thus it came to pass, and this was the beginning . . . Heavens tell me, why?
Tell me, why this, O why? What have we done to merit such disgrace?
The earth is dumb and…
A Mirror on a Stone: The Poetry and Prose of Twelve Martyred Yiddish Writers in the Soviet Union
The criterion for the selection of works to be included in the anthology was above all their lasting literary and artistic value, though here and there poems and short stories were…