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.
“Prélude,” Abishag
For my daughter Nedjéand for her husband Armand Bengui.Where word and spirit make feeling divineI see creation and I see poetry . . .But I know I risk the sin of heresyIf I say the words and spirit…
The Favourite Game
The Breavmans founded and presided over most of the institutions which make the Montreal Jewish community one of the most powerful in the world today.The joke around the city is: The Jews are the…
Yossel Rakover’s Appeal to God
In the ruins of the Ghetto of Warsaw, among heaps of charred rubbish, there was found, packed tightly into a small bottle, the following testament, written during the ghetto’s last hours by a Jew…
The Schlemiel as Modern Hero
[ . . . ] Modern Jewish humor grows from the tension of having to reconcile a belief as absolute as Elijah’s with an experience of failure as absolute as that of the priests of Baal…
Horses in the Ocean
for I. EhrenburgHorses weren’t made for water.They can swim but not too far.“Gloria” means the same as “glory”—You will easily remember this part.Braving the sea, a transatlantic vesselRaised its flag…
O the Chimneys
And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.—Job 19:26O the chimneysOn the ingeniously devised habitations of deathWhen Israel’s body drifted as smokeThrough the…
The Repatriated Ten Years Later
We had more or less forgotten them. We wanted to convince ourselves, without really trying to find out, that the march of time had left them satisfied, happy, at peace. The quarrels provoked by…
Jewish Folk-Expressions under the Nazi Yoke
Everything, nearly everything, was taken away from us in the ghettos and concentration camps by the great criminals. They did not spare our treasures, both material and spiritual. Even our…
Victory Day in Tlemcen, Algeria
On Thursday, the twentieth day of the month of Ziv, which is Iyyar, the government announced the capture of Berlin, the city of blood, the capital of the cruel German nation, may their name be blotted…
History of the Viliampole Jewish Ghetto Police
Sunday, November 1 [1942], it was announced in the order of the day that all policemen must assemble at twenty minutes past two in the premises of the former Slobodka Yeshive for a solemn oath-taking…