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 Faith Healer
I got up and stepped out of the hotel. The early-morning breeze was moist and cool—pure refreshment after a night of suffering.
Everything seemed reborn, and the small-town, good-natured Cubans…
A War Has No “Good End”
In 1943, the nights were black. The country was at war with Germany and a blackout was instituted, perforated from time to time by fifth-columnists lighting cigarettes to reveal Bom Fim’s defensive…
Responsum on Orthodox Judaism in America
Question:In America there is now a notable general rise in religion. The membership of religious organizations has grown, religious gatherings attract a larger audience, etc. Likewise in Jewish life…
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
[ . . . ] Without Jewish help in administrative and police work—the final rounding up of Jews in Berlin was, as I have mentioned, done entirely by Jewish police—there would have been either complete…
The French Enlightenment and the Jews
The era of Western history that began with the French Revolution ended in Auschwitz. The emancipation of the Jews was reversed in the most horrendous way. For a short while after 1945 the reigning…
Gentleman’s Agreement
Every article you’ve done for us, Phil,” Minify had said, “has a kind of human stuff in it. The right answers get in it somehow.”
Sure. But he hadn’t asked for them and pried for them. When he’d…
The Last Mohican
Behind him, a short distance to the right, he had noticed a stranger—give a skeleton a couple of pounds—loitering near a bronze statue on a stone pedestal of the heavy-dugged Etruscan wolf suckling…
Even the Heavens Tell Lies
When I crossed the ocean, I carried with me the habit of speaking to the shadows, and it became my way of life. I look up at the stars that were extinguished long ago. For me they still shine with the…
Letter from Fromet to Moses Mendelssohn
Berlin, 18 July 1777 Berlin, 13 Tammuz 5537
Dear Moses, may you live,
I hope that my letter will find you happy and in good spirits in Königsberg. We are all, thank G-d, well and alive, and when you…
Letters
I often said to a younger girl friend: “If you are marrying without love, after all, do not talk to your husband. Please him as much as your nature can tolerate; do not argue with…
The Kamzan (The Miser)
There was once a Mohel, who was very avaricious. He had inherited some money, and his sole pleasure was to augment his wealth, and count his gold and silver coin. In his own opinion he was a religious…
The Panic, or, The Town of Hérres
In the year 5594 (1834) it was the Ninth of Av, the holy day commemorating the Destruction of the Temple. In the morning, when the worshipers were lamenting at the…