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.
Lamelekh Seal Impression with Four-winged Scarab Beetle
Some lamelekh impressions, like this one from Lachish, have a four-winged scarab beetle as their central image. The scarab beetle was an important mythological symbol in Egypt, associated with Khepri…
Words of Ahiqar
Words of Ahiqar, Elephantine, 5th century BCE. This Aramaic manuscript contains the oldest-known version of Ahiqar, a wisdom book that includes proverbs similar to those found in the biblical book of…
The 1948 Generation: Myth, Profile and Memory
Berl Katznelson did much to foster the awareness of “Yizkor” and its literature in the twenty years after Tel Hai, through an explicit reference to the chain of Jewish martyrology and heroism and a…
No Exit from This Jewry
I—a Jewess—am by definition not a member of the species, or: why should a Jewess not have problems with public assistance and with her children? The postwar German Jew, to the extent that such a being…
A Dispirited Rebellion
Much has been written about the split that occurred in Zionist ideology after the removal of the immediate existential threat in the Six Day War—a split that grew increasingly wide with the Yom Kippur…
What Was the Holocaust?
Is the Holocaust definable? Is it desirable to define it? After all, definitions are abstractions from reality and are useful only insofar as they help us to better understand the world around us. Any…
Head of a Woman
Between 1909 and 1915, Amedeo Modigliani created about twenty-five stone sculptures, using techniques he learned from the modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi. The sculptures were inspired by…
The Lad Bialik
Ira Jan created this hagiographical depiction of her lover Chaim Nahman Bialik being anointed by angels as a child shortly before she was deported by Ottoman authorities to Egypt. Her romantic…
The Banner of the Jew
Wake, Israel, wake! Recall to-day
The glorious Maccabean rage,
The sire heroic, hoary-gray,
His five-fold lion-lineage:
The Wise, the Elect, the Help-of-God,
The Burst-of-Spring, the…
Before the Statue of Apollo
To thee I come, O long-abandoned god
Of early moons and unremembered days,
To thee whose reign was in a greener world
Among a race of men divine with youth,
Strong generations of the sons of earth:
T…
The Holy Balshemtov
The holy Balshemtov walked in the field
In the cold dawn went walking in the field
As winds were blowing from the north.
Bitter cold from the north.
His limbs started to freeze.
Once his limbs were…