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 Melting Pot
Vera [Agitated, coming nearer]: Irony, Mr. Quixano? Please, please, do not imagine there is any irony in my congratulations.David: The irony is in all the congratulations. How can I endure them when…
Palestine Dances!
Against the setting sun, in the fields near a kevutzah in Palestine, a group of young halutzim are dancing. All day long they have worked hard on the land. The morrow brings another day of…
Letter to George Washington
Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free citizens, we now (with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events) behold a government erected by the Majesty…
Halakhic Query to David Oppenheim
The incident was as follows: A woman came before me from a backwater Jewish town weeping bitterly over the sins of her youth, as she had been unfaithful to her first husband before she married her…
Inscription from K’ai-fêng Fu
Concerning the origin of the religion of Israel [Yi-tz’ u-lo-yeh], it has come from a distant past.
It began with Adam [A-tan], who was a descendant of P’an-ku in the nineteenth generation, and it was…
Oath
I swear by the Eternal God and by His ten most holy commandments, which were given on Mount Sinai through Moses as lawgiver after the people had been freed from their bondage in Egypt, that I have…
Five Polemics Concerning Women
Enough, you fools and idiots, enough!
Why do you come to me with sage advice?
Are you still infants? Are you soiling still
Your diapers and sheets with excrement…
Israel, God’s Servant
But you, Israel, My servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
Seed of Abraham My friend—
You whom I drew from the ends of the earth
And called from its far corners,
To whom I said: You are My…
Erev
In every village in the region, in every farmhouse you’d meet them, the Boyars. The first Boyar, family legend had it, had settled in the Polesian forests many generations ago. His name had been Ezra…
Tractatus de intellectus emendatione (Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect)
[1] After experience had taught me that all the things which regularly occur in ordinary life are empty and futile, and I saw that all the things which were the cause or object of my fear had nothing…
La certeza del camino (The True Path)
Great hazards of the world are these rational brutes, the avaricious rich, as they are…
Seder Eliyahu zuta (The Minor Order of Elijah)
The Sultan Selim loved the Jews very much, for he realized that with their help he could strike nations and kill mighty kings. [ . . . ] And it came to pass on the third day, when the Sultan…