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.
God, Man, and Devil
Hershele:For a long time . . . The first evening that you were with us, on Hanuka . . . you said that . . . that Freydenyu . . . my wife’s niece . . . that . . .Mischief:What could I have said about…
Survivors Are Not Heroes
Survivors Are Not Heroes stands five meters tall on the St. George Campus of the University of Toronto. Etrog intended the bronze sculpture to serve as a critique of traditional war memorials, which…
The Fez as a Sign of Patriotism: An Appeal for Imperial Allegiance during the Greco-Ottoman War
The religious ideal that forms the basis of Judaism and that should remain ever present in our Jewish hearts creates no conflict with the requirements of citizenship.
It is true that in the past we…
We, Jewish Socialists
As socialists, we strive to overthrow the existing order, which is based on economic and political slavery, and to create on its ruins that collectivized state which alone can guarantee the full and…
The Helsingfors Program
Recognizing that the organization of the Jewish people for the purpose of independent national action constitutes, in accordance with the second clause of the Basel Program, one of the most important…
Zionism Needs a Living Content
In its initial stage, Zionism was conceived by its pioneers as a movement wholly depending on mechanical factors: there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without a people…
Unmasked
I have always had the illusion that my face did not clearly betray the calumny of my Jewish heritage. I have always taken care to conceal carefully the bitter secret that my father was a rabbi and my…
On the Transfer of the Rabbinical Seminary from Berlin to Eretz Yisrael
[ . . . ] I wrote yesterday to my friend, the illustrious rabbi, our teacher, Rabbi S. Ahronson, and to Rabbi Meir Hildesheimer himself, may his light shine, in a sharp tone, making it clear that I…
Me‘am Lo‘ez to the Song of Songs
Notice, dear readers, that one of the foundations of Judaism is the belief (אמונה) in השארת הנפש, the abidingness of the soul, which means the immortality of the soul, for a person’s soul does not die…
Tolstoy and the Jews
I have often been asked, and still am asked, whether I know from my frequent conversations with Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy about his attitudes toward the Jews. I am asked whether I spoke with him on…
Jerusalem
See the Mount of Olives and the Greek monastery.
Minarets and cupolas abound,
Squares of yellow houses like honeycomb.
The valley of Josephat, white, dry fields—
There in the dell, where it is…
Shtetl
A visitor came to the shtetl,
A stranger, with unrest in his step . . .
No-one recognized his unrest. No-one asked him:
“Stranger, are you weary?”
Across the blue sky the evening drew its curtain…