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.
End of Day XXXV
Like many of Nevelson’s best-known works, End of Day XXXV is made of wood painted a matte black, a color she characterized as “visually weightless.” Many of her sculptures were built from found…
Displaced
In the 1970s, Gitlin was one of several Israeli artists in New York who began to challenge the conventions of minimalist sculpture that favored a stark aesthetic and the use of materials such as iron…
Discorso circa il stato de gl’Hebrei et in particolar dimoranti nell’inclita Citta di Venetia (Discourse on the Condition of the Jews, and in Particular Those Living in the Illustrious City of Venice): On the Jewish Population
As for the number of the Jews, one cannot precisely determine it, not even having firm knowledge of the places in which they dwell. Regarding the ten tribes that were captured by…
Me’amets koaḥ (Strengthener of Power)
Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to praise the One who created us in His honor, for the great goodness that He bestowed upon us. For from this day forward we will not fear the multitudes of people…
Though one God created us: For Lag b’Omer
This poem says that wellbeing [shalom] is ours, since we have God as our king, and we have the Torah, whose paths are wellbeing, even though we have acted wrongly and have been trapped by bad hatred…
Ḥemdat yamim (Choicest of Days): On Rosh Ḥodesh
[ . . . ] Based on the above reasoning, you can see how wrong those people are who fast on the day of the birth of the new moon, as the whole reason for…
They call him Meir
When I heard that Meir the teacher had exchanged his glory for futility, I said:
They call him Meir, but he has no light, for all the lights around him have gone dim.
Indeed, he has a thick cloud…
Her Hair
O peerless beauty, veil your hair, lest you play havoc with the world, without lifting a finger! They are famous throughout the world, they ring in the ears of all who hear of them. The weakest…
To His Gadabout Wife
Only three exits are becoming to every woman, big or small. The first is when she exits from the womb, dirtied, as if from a deep swamp. The second is when she exits from her woman’s tent and enters…
Like the Root
You’ve grown
but not
grown up
You’re ripe
as earth is raw
where roots probe deep
Like all roots
you probe
in deep darkness
Translated by Marcia Falk.
Exercises in Practical Hebrew
“Are you at peace? Hast thou killed and also taken possession?”
(examples of interrogative sentences in a grammar book)
Vishniac’s Windows
How long this staring through a window
In an alley-way by few remembered,
Into the obscure, into a room
Empty of all but its walls
Where pictures hang all in shadow
But for one of mild eyes wide,
As…