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.
My Blue Piano
At home I have a blue piano,
I, who cannot play a note.
It stands in the gloom of the cellar door,
now that the world has grown coarse.
The four hands of the stars play there
—the moonwife sang…
Letter to the Front
To be a Jew in the twentieth century
Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse,
Wishing to be invisible, you choose
Death of the spirit, the stone insanity.
Accepting, take full life. Full agonies:
Your…
Choose Yourself a Hebrew Name!
Excerpt from the Order of the Prime Minister and Minister of Defense:. . . It is recommended that all commanders (from platoon leader to head of staff) change their family names—be they German, Anglo…
Dani: In Memoriam
From his earliest childhood, Dani was happy, sociable, and cooperative. When he was in Tova’s kindergarten, he loved to sit together with the children and sing: “Yulla yulla, what’ll we do without our…
Remove Your Shoes
Remove your shoes from your feet and, barefoot, feel the earth!
Whatever was in the past and be what may now—today the land is ours, the heavens are ours, and the sea is our sea.
Let us go out to the…
The Ma‘abarah (The Immigrant Transit Camp)
Pounding, heavy feet climbed the muddy path up the hill that looked out over wild bushes. The walkers’ steps sank in the earth next to each other and on top of each other on the path upward, in the…
Song of the Herdsmen
Oh prairie, endless prairie,
The eyes of the herdsmen look out:
Not a bush, not a thistle, not a tree,
A new wind comes to the desert.
Over forlorn expanses the song of the herdsmen
Will sound and…
Flowers in the Rifle Barrel
When spring is asleep it palely awakens
In fields of fire the final battle will cease
And a wonderful morning from valley to hillside
Will rise up in singing and in joy.
The sun will stand still…
Hebrew
In solitary confinement it was forbidden to bathe, but when I got to my cell I washed my hands, face, and upper body well and lay down to sleep. This time I slept for about an hour and a half. At six…
Fatherland
The Jews held cattle dealers in contempt. They considered them illiterate louts in no way different from peasants. My grandfather never let a cattle dealer into his house. Into the barn yes, but never…
Dawns
I am only this song that you place on my lips.
I am yours: yours my arms, yours my legs,
Yours my hands, yours my belly, my loins,
Yours my breasts, yours my teeth, yours my lips,
Yours my tongue…
Noe Yarcho, Physician to the Jewish Gauchos
Through the large portal of “The Jewish Gauchos,” one of the most moving literary tributes to the Republic in the first hundred years after the May Revolution of 1810, Dr. Noé Yarcho, the “miracle…