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 Making of Americans
It’s a great question this question of washing. One never can find anyone who can be satisfied with anybody else’s washing. I knew a man once who never as far as anyone could see ever did any washing…
Motke the Thief
The street lamps of the Old Town began to flare out in preparation for the night. And soon the yellow gas-lights shone in the shop windows too, and outside the little…
A Few Say:
Day unto day bequeaths its fading sun,
and night after night laments for night.
Summer after summer is gathered in fall
and the world in its sorrow gives song.
Tomorrow we’ll die, the word in us…
Benjamin, One of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, Stained-Glass Window, Hadassah Medical Centre, Jerusalem
In the late 1950s, Marc Chagall began to work on stained-glass windows for the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. Each of the twelve windows that were ultimately created for the hospital’s…
A Vision of Yemen: An Ashkenazic Visitor
[ . . . ] [A]n Ashkenazic sage came to Ṣanʿāʾ in the time of Sar Shalom al-ʿIrāqī (d. 1780) . . . and stayed at his house and ate at his table. Fearing for the Ashkenazi’s life, Sar Shalom told him…
Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years
This book tells a true story. In it, what was probably the strangest youth who ever lived, shall speak with its own voice. This life needs to be believed, as strange as it may seem. But strangeness…
My Memories
That was how she watched over the samovar all night long, so that it would boil properly. Occasionally, Grandfather stayed over for several nights at the home of one of the gentry. Then, she would…
In Which World?
A choked wail . . . Mama paces around the narrow room as though asking for something, her hands grasping her head and striking her heart, and with sobs caught in her throat, she calls out:“Woe unto me…
Grand Synagogue of Paris
Designed in the neo-Romanesque style of many contemporaneous French churches, the Grand Synagogue of Paris followed the prevailing architectural aesthetic in France, integrating the architectural and…
The Last Breath
The Last Breath is one of the genre paintings depicting the lives of fishermen and their families for which Jozef Israëls was best known. In this scene, a woman is weeping over the body of her husband…
Shulamis
CharactersMaenoyakh, an old citizen of BethlehemShulamis, his daughterAvisholom, a young hero descended from the Maccabees.Fourth SceneAvisholom I shall not leave here until I have restedJerusalem is…
Letter from an Egyptian Jewish Deist on Why He Will Not Convert to Islam
You said, in the beginning of the second page, “The young man then adopted the Muslim religion.” Please omit this because I did not change the faith of my parents, although I respect the three…