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 Pillar of Salt
My name is Benillouche, Alexandre Mordekhai.
How galling the smiles of my classmates! In our alley, and at the Alliance School, I hadn’t known how ridiculous, how revealing, my name could be…
And They Told Us We Were Immortal
George:They always leave the key under the windowsill. I told you so.Bert:Ahuh.[George goes to the doors and yells in front of each one.]George:Mamma! Stephen! Mamma![No one answers. Pause.]No one’s…
The Stream of Life
There is much I cannot tell you. I am not going to be autobiographical. I want to be “bio.”
I write with the flow of the words.
Before the appearance of the mirror, the person didn’t know his own face…
Day of Atonement: Standing
My Lord, how stands it with me now
Who, standing here before you
(who, fierce as you are, are also just).
Cannot bow down. You order this.
Why, therefore, I must break
If bend I will not, yet bend I…
Red Ribbon on a White Horse
The sunset lit up the sky, splashing the drab tenements with gold, bringing memories of Sabbath candles and the smell of gefüllte fish. When I had lived on Hester Street, I would…
Shylock and His Daughter
Shylock:You speak of revenge, you who cage us within ghettos, you who cast us alive into flames, only because we are Jews. [Pause.] Are not Jews and Christians alike fashioned in the image of God…
Exodus
The Exodus was declared fit and ready for the run to Palestine.
Ari set the sailing time as the morning after the Chanukah party which the management of the Dome Hotel had arranged on…
The Golden Garden
[The lessons a mother should give her son]: My son, you should know that before your body looked the way it does now, it was nothing. You were formed in my belly from the drops of fertility that came…
Autobiography
When the Seven Years War broke out in 1756, I was the father of four children, and the cost of living was high. I had tried to make my way in the world like an honourable man. When the enemy Prussians…
Letter on His Conversion
A few days after receiving your precious letter of 5 November 1854, I began collating [the pages of my book], which took me until New Year’s eve to finish. But what a chasm in between! I began the…
The Death of the Tavern Keeper’s Wife
With every stone that was set in the new barn, another drop of life seemed to ebb from the wife of the randar or tavern keeper. When she looked out at the building, she often said that she would not…
Seething Times
This morning I met Vaclav on the street.
“God himself has arranged our meeting,” he continued after the usual greetings and inquiries about health. “Walking here, I thought of you.”
“Might I be able…