
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.
Cry of the Peacock
In the women’s prison where the Guards had taken Peacock, six people slept in a cell designed for one. They sat on the floor, occupying every rat-infested inch, blindfolded and handcuffed for weeks in…
Counting the Omer
Leiba recognized that Fraydel was in danger of disappearing down the well of her own thoughts.
Fraydel was a secret keeping herself from the world. When she spoke, it was yet another way of keeping…
Beyond the Pale
Gutke found her journal at the bottom of her midwife’s bag and opened it for the first time that year:
Even with my talent for visions, I never would have guessed half of what happened. I suppose that…
Pavel’s Letters
Something is wrong between me and the story I want to write. Whatever subject I touch on, after five or four, sometimes even two pages, either the story throws me out or I throw myself out. As if I…
Cuckoo
So, like I said before, the only problem of Pnina was, she couldn’t have children. Everything else, a husband, money, work, vacations, she had. Only no children. Not that she and Yochanan didn’t try…

I Protest
I wipe the dust off my books
with a small t-shirt, an old t-shirt
which was once my son’s. We have
more dust this summer than last,
and its composition is different…

Behistun Trilingual Inscription and Aramaic Papyrus
Behistun Trilingual Inscription, Persia. This inscription of Darius I (reigned 522–486 BCE) illustrates the polyglot character of the Persian Empire. Versions in the Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian…
Words Taken to Heart: Four Answers to One Question
You Will Be Wrapped in Silk
“And how do you merit to live so long?”
—Because I know there is need to consider.
At my birth someone said, “He will be wrapped
in silk.” And now the guests are…
Fierce Attachments
My mother and I are out walking. I ask if she remembers the women in that building in the Bronx. “Of course,” she replies. I tell her I’ve always thought sexual rage was what made them so crazy.…