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 Dispersion of Israel
I have observed that on account of our many sins these days, very many Jews have…
Instruction, Law, and Nation: A Critical Historical Inquiry into the Essence of Judaism
Since Judaism is law, the doubts of the Jewish youth are not an evil, at least per se they are not an evil. If Judaism were only instruction, the doubts raised by the instruction would…
Bar Mitzvah Sermon: On Jewish Education and Secularization
[ . . . ] Some [Jewish] people have children who may be likened to seeds, others who can be likened to vegetables, and yet others, to thorns. When parents raise their children in the ways of Torah…
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…
Verses to a Dictionary and to the Neckerchiefs (Worn by the Gauchos)
With you, it is not impossible to define
creatures and things with the simplicity
of the fish whose scales streak the sea with blue and gold,
Or of the sea itself that swells with the gracefulness of…
The Killers of the Fields
In ascetic silence, in stony skirts,God’s handmaid falls on her face—Flash of an empty night, a forlorn desert waste,Shards of sunset upon the rocks.This land. Trodden, just like this, by a wandering…
The Madonna in the Subway
Across from me in the subway sat the madonna
Crossing her legs,
Bending over a tabloid.
She read about a cashier-girl who jumped into the water
When her bridegroom left her with a rising belly.
The…
O Quickly, Messiah
O quickly, Messiah, come quickly at last,
The world is engirdled with serpents, in vast
Poisonous circles of famine and care,
Terror and torment, decay and despair;
The earth has denied men the…
Moments of Hope
Jews, let us be cheerful!
It won’t be long, don’t fear—
The war will soon be over.
Their end is very near.
Cheerful, don’t you worry.
Don’t go around so sad.
Have both hope and patience—
Bear things…
An Open Wound
Six million perished not because of a cataclysm of nature, as is evoked by use of that inadequate term “holocaust”; they died not because they lacked courage, but because they lacked the minimum…
Clockwork Doll
That night, I was a clockwork doll
and I whirled around, this way and that,
and I fell on my face and shattered to bits
and they tried to fix me with all their skill.
Then I was a proper doll once…
Each Rose
Each rose is an island
of the promised peace,
the eternal peace.
Inside the petals
of each rose dwells
a sapphire bird called
“And They Shall Beat Their Swords.”
And it seems so
close, the light…