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.
Letter on Education
With the grace of God, Friday, before the Shabbat of the reading of Noah, 5672 [1911].
To our fellow Hasidim (in the city of Turov),
My stomach turned and my ears burned on hearing the terrible news…
Screams in Ukraine
How can it be told in simple, quiet words?
How can you gloss over the sharp outcry
So that people will listen to it and be silent,
With mute eyes, even without a sigh?
Without a sigh, since every…
A Bintel Brief
Dear Editor,I am one of those unfortunate girls thrown by fate into a dark and dismal shop, and I need your counsel.Along with my parents, sisters and brothers, I came from Russian Poland where I had…
He Who Calls Himself Leader
No one can order his face in advance
And you shouldn’t throw a stone at a dog
Showing its howling muzzle to the night sky.
But when I think about it,
Losing myself in sadness, in this night-cafe
Fogg…
Who Is Vildman the Wrestler?
Among the wrestlers competing in the current tournament in the Panorama [Building] on Karowa Street, fighting for the 1912 Polish Championship, is a Jew called Vildman.He has become quite famous, in…
Poem No. 228
A Jewish musiker,
Alex Herzovitch,
wound his Schubert around and around
like diamonds.
Morning to night, happy, oh happy,
he ground out that same old
sonata, ground it by rote, ground it
to a…
My Way to Palestine
Whatever happened to me on that day seemed to urge me to muster up all my courage and hope. When the ship approached the harbor of Jaffa, many people were there to meet us…
The Sermon
For a while there was quiet—a total, final quiet in the room. Then the chairman stirred, beetling his heavy eyebrows, and spoke with gruff, ironical severity: “Comrade Yudka, I call you to order! If…
In Sand and Water
In sand and in water
You will yet raise expectant eyes,
Or eyes
As indifferent as death to machine-gun bullets and borders on maps.
Together with you
Yet another sought to escape
(At long last to…
One of a City and Two of a Family
The book being presented to the reader represents a selection of a thousand autobiographies composed by Jewish children, survivors of the conflagration, tender children who lived for months and even…
Religious Praxis: The Meaning of Halakhah
Living in accordance with the Halakhah, demarcating a sphere of the sacred through halakhic practice—is this the ultimate end of the religious life? The answer is both yes and no. On the one hand…
The Difference
Yitzhak Klein gave such an angry kick to the garbage can that it flew straight into the middle of the sidewalk, scattering its stinking contents in all directions. Klein nearly exploded in his boiling…