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.
Life and Fate
Never, before the war, had Viktor thought about the fact that he was a Jew, that his mother was a Jew. Never had his mother spoken to him about it—neither during his childhood, nor during his years as…
On Saint Katerine’s Day
Katerine Vrublevska had thick black curly hair, large, dark velvet eyes, a pale, dreamy, longish face and was fifteen years old.
Her classmates described her skin colour as “café au lait.” She knew…
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…
An Everyday God
Of course I could explain the history and the comings and goings of the Jews, assuring you that they have suffered much, that everyone persecuted them because they could, that those caricatures you’d…
The Labyrinth of Zion
In truth Ezra is still very young, but sometimes these marriages are the ones that turn out best. I used to think it was a crime to do this to these children, but I see so many marriages for love…
Mid-Century: An Anthology of Jewish Life and Culture in Our Times
In the tercentenary year of Jewish settlement in America, this volume is offered as evidence that the past decade—a mid-century point—has seen the publication of some of the most…
Symposium on Jewish Belief
I am convinced that the problems implicit in “death of God” theology concern Judaism as much as Christianity. Technically death-of-God theology reflects the Christian tradition of the passion of the…
Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin
The Nuremberg judgment only partly relieved the world’s moral tensions. Punishing the German war criminals created the feeling that, in international life as in civil society, crime should not be…
Herzog
If am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.
Some people thought he was cracked and for a time he himself had doubted that he was all there. But now, though he still behaved…
Jews in Hell
The fable tells us
that the Jews bought for themselves
a private place in hell.
In the first circle,
seated on a wooden bench,
Karl Marx fans himself with his hand.
The prophet Jeremiah
fights off…
Bene ha-ne’urim (The Youth)
Jonas saw that he was successful in the study of these sciences and that he had mastered the Latin tongue; in addition, his younger brother, who would be taking over his role in the family had grown…
Letter to Judah Leib Gordon
Kovno, Thursday, 20 Heshvan 5629 [5 November 1868]
His Honor, the Great Sage and Sweet Singer of Israel,
Judah Leib Gordon, greetings!
My dear esteemed gentleman! While I was still in Suwalki…