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.
Mr. Mani
—I quite agree, sir. It was done a bit cavalierly and without a proper security check, because he had become known to everyone throughout the autumn months of the advance on Jerusalem. Which is why it…
Sonechka
Almost before she was out of the cradle, Sonechka was a bookworm. As Efrem, elder brother and family satirist, never tired of repeating, “All that reading has given Sonechka a butt like a chair and a…
American Pastoral
Meanwhile Joy was telling me things about her life that I’d never known as a single-minded kid searching the neighborhood for a grape to burst—Joy was tossing into this agitated pot of memory called…
Once More
You’re so brave, you camp-followers of Cain—
after Baudelaire, yet! Shit-shoveling first father,
your visa was validated
when that cretinous cudgel whammed the wandering
flock’s shepherd, that day…
Tefillin
In Jewish tradition, the command to “bind them [God’s words] as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead” is understood as requiring passages from the Torah to be written on…
The Family Tree
I have a lovely period photo, sepia coloured, with all the characters in a row, and their gentle trusting faces, photograph faces that nobody ever looks at now. They are the shifbrider, the ship…
Ashlar Masonry Wall in Samaria Acropolis
The masonry in the royal palace of Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom, is considered the finest example of ashlar masonry from the Iron Age. The blocks are cut so well that they fit together…
Hotel Bolivia: The Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism
Among the very few possessions my parents were permitted to take with them when they emigrated as refugees from Austria to Bolivia in June 1939 was a box camera and two family photo…
Number the Stars
The officer stared at them grimly.
“Now,” Mama said in a strong voice, “you have seen that we are not hiding anything. May my children go back to bed?”
The officer ignored her. Suddenly he grabbed a…
Coin with Ear
The image of an ear on this coin may symbolize God as the one who hears prayers, as in passages such as Psalm 34:16, 18, and Psalm 130:2. The image is paralleled on Egyptian stelas that depict…
A Seated Man
In these fragments of a mural from Kuntillet Ajrud, only partially preserved, a seated male figure appears to be wearing a wide-collared yellow garment. A long sidelock is visible in front of his ear…
Cymbals
This pair of bronze cymbals from a Canaanite stratum in Megiddo has a bronze loop set into the center of each cymbal for a finger. The Bible often refers to Israelites using cymbals that undoubtedly…