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 Mistake or the Second Life of Sylvain Regard
I had learned of Louise’s suicide upon my return to Blida, my hometown. Spring had just filled the streets with the insolent beauty of those impassive young women. Violent yet secretive, as in Spain…
Ferocious Animals
Benleví:[while he speaks, Sara enters with the slippers] All they do in the synagogue is talk about Ishmael.Sara:[bent over, putting on the slippers] They seem to forget that they’re there to talk to…
The Tree of Life: A Novel about Life in the Lodz Ghetto
Presess Rumkowski plunged into the sea of activities and duties like a brave captain who knows his destination, sure that no blizzard, no stormy chaos will cause the ship entrusted into his hands by…
Hellenism in Jewish Palestine
Rabbinic literature is replete with valuable information about the life, manners and customs of the ancients. Many passages in it can be properly understood only in the general frame of its…
Goyim
When first touched by memory, I found myself already in the midst of [ . . . ] ominous twilights which came intermittently, in series, and have stayed with me as the keenest memory of childhood.
Our…
Wasteland
He carried his camera and case into the dining room, and as he stood there for a moment, peering at the table through the twilight haze in the room, he breathed deeply of the familiar holiday odors…
The Cold Wind and the Warm
Tobey’s Voice:I find as I grow older that I keep going back to my friendship with Willie—when we were young and happy and living in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the early years of the century…
Portnoy’s Complaint
Even if I consider myself too much of a big shot to set foot inside a synagogue for fifteen minutes—which is all he is asking—at least I should have respect enough to change into decent clothes for…
Epitaph from the Tombstone of Rebecca Henriquez da Costa
On the day of my abundant joy
illness suddenly overcame me
Birth pangs and rupture
overwhelmed me
I gave birth and died, like a blossom
I turned away
And the fruit of my womb was
brought with me to…
Statement of Mourning
Do you deem me to be hard and evil-hearted in that I should hasten to do a match during my period of mourning? Am I to forget the love of the wife of my youth, my pure dove, whom God graciously gave…
Private Journal of a Visit to Egypt and Palestine
There is no city in the world which can bear comparison in point of interest with Jerusalem,—fallen, desolate, and abject even as it appears—changed as it has been…
Die Pinchasgasse
“What you spend in honor of the holy days, the Lord will richly reward!” says the Talmud, and pious Pinchas granted everything his wife demanded. Clothes for the children and ornaments for herself…