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 Letters That Never Came
After the war with Spain came another war. The postman, though, he stopped coming. Well, actually, he didn’t stop. What I mean is, he didn’t stop in. Papa always waited for him by the balcony, he’d be…
Parnassus
Technically I was a man.This spindly squeaky thing with the Adam’s-apple accent was, by virtue of being thirteen and bar-mitzvahed, a technical man.And so the phone call came: they needed a tenth for…
Hester among the Ruins
At the appointed café on Leopoldstrasse, HF is waiting by the door, which he holds open for me. It is perfect weather for sitting out of doors, but he rejects the sidewalk tables. Inside it is dark…
The Boxer
Aron maintained confident hope in one child. To this day, it remains uncertain whether or not this hope was fulfilled, but you can’t talk to him about it.The transport that led from the Bohemian…
The Pagan Rabbi
When I heard that Isaac Kornfeld, a man of piety and brains, had hanged himself in the public park, I put a token in the subway stile and journeyed out to see the tree. [ . . . ][ . . . ] On the day…
The Adventures of Augie March
I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted…
The Shulḥan ‘Aruk: Enduring Code of Jewish Law
Shulḥan ‘Aruk, a term taken over from early rabbinic exegesis in the Midrash and applied to one of the most influential, truly epochal literary creations of Jewish history, has a double or even triple…
Joseph the Righteous
Zlikha:I will leave him in prison now[for] he has committed a great sin.May he taste the recompense of his evil deed thereand may this wicked man die.[They take Yosef and she remains perplexed and at…
The Quarrel between Hebrew and Yiddish
Hebrew:Woe be to me, in my old age,That it should have to come to this:That I stand in judgment hereWith a shameless servant girlAnd her vulgar band of friends.No one knows me anymore!Yiddish:Oh…
History of the House of David
The sultan thought for a moment and said, “I know, Jew, that your heart is not devoid of intelligence. After all, you want to live a long life in your household with your children. So, do not…
Proclamation of the Jewish Labor Bund
On the sixth and seventh of April a pogrom took place in Kishinev! A band of Christians attacked the Jewish townspeople and with the greatest cruelty they…