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.
Speech: On Jews and Nationalism
Are we always and in all circumstances united with our surroundings, so that only the synagogue, rather than society, attests to separation?
Do not believe that in such unity and cooperation I mean…
Feuilleton: On Varshavsky’s Jewish Folk Songs
What do we call folk songs? Of course, these are the songs sung by the people. The songs can either come from unknown authors of the ancient, forgotten past . . . or these can be recently written…
Assimilation or Polonization?
Assimilation, taken literally, means making things similar to each other, and in this concrete instance refers to a desire for the assimilation of Jews in terms of language, culture, and customs to…
The Hebrew Book
Literary-minded Jews have long been perplexed by a strange phenomenon. Our literature which is thousands of years old, comprises tens of thousands of volumes, and represents the many creative forces…
Sermon on B’nai Mitzvah Celebrations
A male child becomes obligated to observe the commandments at the age of thirteen years and one day. Therefore, on the first day of his fourteenth year, a father grasps his son in his hand and says,…
A Tale of Rebbe Yisroel of Ruzhin
Our master, the holy rabbi, told a tale of the Ba‘al Shem Tov (may his memory be for a blessing to the life of the world to come!). There was once a matter involving great danger to the human life of…
Russia
Russia! If my faith in you were any less great
I might have said something different.
I might have complained: You have led us astray,
And seduced us young wandering gypsies.
Precious to us is each…
Unity
When God’s holy law is read out
Do you think I forget one bold lust?
And enjoying each lust with fearing,
Do you think I know not God’s law?
Translated by David Soeterndorp.
Midnight
A late crescent drips, its blood still red,
And the tranquil grasses of the night
Bend their small heads, one upon another,
Slumbering, arm beneath cheek,
In its peaceful light.
A weary wanderer…
Portrait
This is what he must have looked like,
Christ in the autumn, like me with my
twenty-two summers: still beardless,
blond, and the girls couldn’t help it,
dreamed of him night after night!
Translated…
Freckled Childhood
I certainly had an obscure childhood
but intensely my own,
a childhood which wanted to be dashing
but had the features of a caricature.
Yes, a caricature. For example:
that absurd love for Sophie,…