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.
I Was a New Immigrant for a Month: The Aliyah from Yemen and the African Problem
In the living quarters of the [North] African [Jews] in the transit camps, here’s what you’ll find: you’ll find filth, card games, and money, drunkenness, and whoring. Many of them are afflicted with…
In the Negev Plains: A Play in Three Acts
Abraham:We only have a few minutes, and we have to decide whether the kibbutz should keep fighting, despite the army’s withdrawal, while we’re surrounded. It must be clear that any decision, one way…
The Stone Quarry
Nissim Levy dodged out through the back fence. He said goodbye to Danino, but instead of running away, he stood still, not far from there, and tried to pick up some words from the…
The Seagull
On a turquoise sea sails a ship. A sharp-eyed gull flies around the mast, swooping down from time to time to see what is happening on the ship, in all its decks. The boat has three decks and a bridge…
Life and Fate
Never, before the war, had Viktor thought about the fact that he was a Jew, that his mother was a Jew. Never had his mother spoken to him about it—neither during his childhood, nor during his years as…
On Saint Katerine’s Day
Katerine Vrublevska had thick black curly hair, large, dark velvet eyes, a pale, dreamy, longish face and was fifteen years old.
Her classmates described her skin colour as “café au lait.” She knew…
Jewish Graveyard Near Leningrad
Jewish graveyard near Leningrad.
Crooked fence of rotten plywood.
Behind the fence lie side by side
lawyers, merchants, musicians, and revolutionaries.
For themselves they were singing.
For…
Yossel Rakover’s Appeal to God
In the ruins of the Ghetto of Warsaw, among heaps of charred rubbish, there was found, packed tightly into a small bottle, the following testament, written during the ghetto’s last hours by a Jew…
An Everyday God
Of course I could explain the history and the comings and goings of the Jews, assuring you that they have suffered much, that everyone persecuted them because they could, that those caricatures you’d…
The Labyrinth of Zion
In truth Ezra is still very young, but sometimes these marriages are the ones that turn out best. I used to think it was a crime to do this to these children, but I see so many marriages for love…
Mid-Century: An Anthology of Jewish Life and Culture in Our Times
In the tercentenary year of Jewish settlement in America, this volume is offered as evidence that the past decade—a mid-century point—has seen the publication of some of the most…