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.
Bust of Moses Mendelssohn
This sculpture of Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) was created by Tassaert, a distinguished sculptor of the day. Mendelssohn sat for him, and copies of the bust were later made for Mendelssohn’s closest…
Minyan
Three Russians who didn’t understand Hebrew sat in the back of the synagogue. One was missing an arm. Two Polish Jews sat in front of them. One had his place by the partition so that he could stretch…
The Last War or the Third, That Is the Question: A Conversation in Kibbutz Ein-Shemer
Avishai:There’s nothing joyful about the guys who returned from the war. I don’t have the feeling that this is the last time that the people sitting here will put on uniform. Right after the war the…
The Rabbi’s Son
Do you remember Zhitomir, Vasily? Do you remember the River Teterev, Vasily, and that night in which the Sabbath, the young Sabbath, crept along the sunset crushing the stars with the heel of her red…
My First Goose
Savitsky, the commander of the Sixth Division, rose when he saw me, and I was taken aback by the beauty of his gigantic body. He rose—his breeches purple, his crimson cap cocked to the side, his…
Gedali
On the eve of the Sabbath I am always tormented by the dense sorrow of memory. In the past on these evenings, my grandfather’s yellow beard caressed the volumes of Ibn Ezra. My old grandmother, in her…
How Things Were Done in Odessa
I was the one who began.
“Reb Arye-Leib,” I said to the old man. “Let’s talk about Benya Krik. Let’s talk about his lightning-quick beginning and his terrible end. Three shadows block the path of my…
1920 Diary
Finally, a town. We ride through the shtetl of Tartakuv, Jews, ruins, cleanliness of a Jewish kind, the Jewish race, little stores.
I am still ill, I’ve still not gotten back on…
On the Question of Languages
We may assume that the executive committee of Aḥdut Ha-Avoda did what was necessary to explain our position to our allied organizations abroad, the exact situation of the question of language in Eretz…
Day Grows Darker
Day grows darker
And darker.
Mobs are advancing on the town,
Mobs clotted with blood,
Made remorseless by killing children,
Lustfully they advance,
To rip off heads,
Feeble, melancholy heads.
They…
We’re Laughing Our Heads Off
We’re laughing our heads off:
None of us wears a top-hat
We just go around with heads—or without heads—
But the Rabbi of Uman
Holds up a mirror to the sun.
We laugh our heads off
When a gang comes…