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.
Sonechka
Almost before she was out of the cradle, Sonechka was a bookworm. As Efrem, elder brother and family satirist, never tired of repeating, “All that reading has given Sonechka a butt like a chair and a…
American Pastoral
Meanwhile Joy was telling me things about her life that I’d never known as a single-minded kid searching the neighborhood for a grape to burst—Joy was tossing into this agitated pot of memory called…
Phantom Pain
When I was born, Robert G. Mehlman was at the peak of his glory. He was more than a major talent. But within five years there wasn’t much of that glory left, and my mother sometimes compared him to a…
The Funeral’s Early...
In Jewish folklore the sight of a water carrier bearing one or two full pails is an omen of good fortune; empty pails foretell bad fortune. The funeral’s early, the concert is late.I go to both (such…
Child Sacrifice in Relief
Child sacrifice in relief, Pozo Moro, Spain, ca. 500 BCE. The relief shows a two-headed monster receiving offerings in bowls. One bowl holds a child. Because the site shows Phoenician influence, the…
Pillared House
This drawing and the following replica of a pillared house are composites of many excavated houses from the Iron Age, 1200 to 586 BCE; none has been discovered standing. The images show domestic…
Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered
[…] I want to tell you about my brother’s ghost.
I had so looked forward to seeing him again: my Schorschi, my Czech brother, who had sent us a few postcards from Theresienstadt. But he wasn’t there…
Hamsa-like Hand in Khirbet el-Kom (Makkedah) Tomb
This small hand, carved in stone with downward-pointing fingers, was probably apotropaic—that is, meant to protect the person buried in the tomb where it was found. It was carved on a wall between the…
My Name Is Barak
When I try to think which game I like the most, I usually think of make-believe acting games. Even if they’re without masks, funny clothes, or old shoes with wrinkled tongues. Even if there’s no…
Things I Keep to Myself
I really like it when it rains in the morning, before school, because then, there’s this atmosphere of winter. Outside, it’s cloudy and pretty dark, and in the classroom and hallways you suddenly…
Glengarry Glen Ross
Williamson (Brushing past him.): Excuse me…Levene:…excuse you, nothing, you be as cold as you want, but you just fucked a good man out of six thousand dollars and his goddamn bonus ’cause you didn’t…