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 Late-Comer
He will surely come with songs of joy, carrying the child, in the full assembly. My friends, wait here for the bridegroom of blood.
He should be coming down the road. Why is the child so late? You…
The Vow
I saw your figure in my dream, gazelle, flashing like lightning. It gave light to my darkened eyes, and I saw that your face was a model of the heavens. The sun and moon are set in it, the stars and…
After the Vision
How can I hew out a song when the hammer of my senses is coated with rust? How can I play the lute when my hand is ensnared in fetters of fear? For my heart has entered the gazelle’s paved [palace]…
The Innkeeper’s Love Song
O you paragon of glory and grace, listen to the call of Papos and his cry! He is bellowing like a bull, braying at you like a donkey, for you are his cow and his she-ass. His heart is already parched…
Ballad of Repentance
Dedicated to the Great Lord of Hosts.
Supreme and merciful God,
my affection to Your lofty and just compassion
dedicates to You today
the exordia of my muse.
Protect, immense Lord,
my coarse and…
Shreds of Earth
On a night like this if a shudder were to shake your flesh as though a nightmare
had severed your sleep I could have risen and quietly walked to the kitchen
to write you a poem that would bring you…
Parnassus
Technically I was a man.This spindly squeaky thing with the Adam’s-apple accent was, by virtue of being thirteen and bar-mitzvahed, a technical man.And so the phone call came: they needed a tenth for…
Lamelekh Seal Impression with Winged Sun Disk
Many of the seal impressions, with the inscription lamelekh “(Belonging, or pertaining) to the king,” followed by the name of a city, feature a two-winged figure, probably a winged sun disk…
Double-pipe Player
On this ceramic double pipe from Tel Malhata, the musician uses one hand on each pipe to control pitch. Usually women played the double pipe, but in this case, it is a man. This double pipe is…
Assurbanipal Feasting in Palace Garden
Assurbanipal Feasting in Palace Garden, relief from the palace of Assurbanipal (reigned 669–627 BCE) in Nineveh. The king and his queen are surrounded by ornamental and fruit trees, palms, and vines…
At Home in America: Second-Generation New York Jews
[…] Second-generation Jews, like their immigrant parents, succeeded in developing a nucleus of Jewishness, defined through secondary associations, that made being Jewish an impelling reality for their…
To Be a Jew in France in 1982
Confronted by difficult problems after 1945 (reconstruction of a community life after the physical and material losses of the Second World War, integration of successive and ever more numerous waves…