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.
Letter to King Artaxerxes and the King’s Reply
And in the time of Artaxerxes, Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel, and their colleagues wrote to King Artaxerxes of Persia, a letter written in Aramaic and translated.
Aramaic: Rehum the commissioner and…
Legumes and Barley
Greetings, Islah.
Now, I shall dispatch legumes tomorrow. Meet the boat tomorrow on Sabbath. Lest, if they get lost, by the life of YHH, I swear that I will take your life. Do not rely on Meshullemeth…
Museum of Applied Arts (facing Üllői Street)
The Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest is considered an art-nouveau masterpiece. When it was built, it was ground-breaking not only for Hungarian architecture but also for museum architecture in…
In the Secret Place of Thunder
Mendl said: This city of Kisalon [lit. “Foolsville,” Yid. Glupsk], where I’ll begin my story, is very important, for the entire Jewish Pale of Settlement is named after it. And it is not through…
Dreyfus in Kasrilevke
I doubt if the Dreyfus case made such a stir anywhere as it did in Kasrilevka.
Paris, they say, seethed like a boiling vat. The papers carried streamers, generals shot themselves, and small boys ran…
Our Common Language
Ai, the troubles of a greenhorn! A scholar in the subject of cloakmaking, as I am today, I had not yet become. And if in those days you had “unioned” me till you were blue in the face, I still would…
Swann’s Way
My father and mother were left alone and sat down for a moment; then my father said: “Well, shall we go up to bed?”
“As you wish, dear, though I don’t feel in the least like sleeping. I don’t know why…
The Girl Who Went Right
Four weeks before the completion of the new twelve-story addition the store advertised for two hundred experienced saleswomen. Rachel Wiletzky, entering the superintendent’s office after a wait of…
Until the End
From the cradle to the grave,
A heavy burden crushes us . . .
Constrains the mind, destroys our strength,
Wreathes our brow with thorns . . .
And yet, with amazing power
Our lips run along the…
The Dybbuk
Three Idlers [finish chanting]:Why, oh why,Did the soul descendFrom the highest heightTo the deepest end?The greatest fallContains the upward flight.[A long pause. All three sit motionless, lost in…
Victim Testimonies of the 1903 Kishinev Pogrom
[This testimony was] given by rape victim Rivke Shif. She is the wife of Shabse Shif, a shoemaker specializing in shoe uppers. (He lived at 11…
Topographic Map of the city of Caracas
Ángel Jacob Jesurún’s topographical map of Caracas, with its geometric grid, is the first map after Venezuela’s independence to be drawn and printed by a native of the city. After decades of war and…