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 Author of Himself
The Jews in the Warsaw ghetto were tormented; they experienced terrible things. But from time to time they also experienced fine and wonderful things. They suffered. But they also loved. Except that…
The New Egypt
I think of my father who believes
a Jew can outrun fate by owning land.
Slave to property now, I mow
and mow, my destiny the new Egypt.
From his father, the tailor, he learned not
to rent but to own…
psalm
I am not lyric any more
I will not play the harp
for your pleasure
I will not make a joyful
noise to you, neither
will I lament
for I know you drink
lamentation, too,
like wine
so I dully…
Generation without Memory: A Jewish Journey in Christian America
There are contradictions and ambivalences in our celebrating Thanksgiving. We are recent Americans. It wasn’t the Mayflower that brought our people over here. We know too much about what the coming of…
Hiding Places: A Father and His Sons Retrace Their Family’s Escape from the Holocaust
[…] I made the mistake of stopping in for Sabbath services. Dutifully I tried praying but was distracted by the dance of light reflecting from people’s wedding rings on the walls. When everyone stood…
A Certain People
Change has been so rapid, in fact, that American Jews in their twenties and thirties inhabit a completely different world from that in which their parents grew up.
The essence of the change is that…
1949, the First Israelis
Itzhak Refael once warned his colleagues on the Jewish Agency Executive that if they insisted on “regulating” the immigration quotas only the immigration from North Africa would remain for it could…
I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing Up in the Holocaust
The shaving of hair has a startling effect. The absence of hair transforms individual women into like bodies. Indistinguishable. Age melts away. Other personal differences melt away. Facial…
Psalm 92
A psalm. A song; for the sabbath day.
It is good to praise the Lord,
to sing hymns to Your name, O Most High,
To proclaim Your steadfast love at daybreak,
Your faithfulness each night
With a ten…