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.
Portrait of Yitzhak Katzenelson
Yitzhak Katzenelson (1885–1944) was a Hebrew and Yiddish poet from Łódź who was imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto, where he was extraordinarily prolific as a poet, playwright, translator and public…
The Avenue de l’Opéra, Sunlight, Winter Morning
In late 1897, Camille Pissarro, the noted impressionist artist, known for his many landscapes and cityscapes, came to Paris and rented a room in the Hôtel du Louvre, which gave him a good view of the…
Little Hans: Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy
The first reports about Hans date to the time when he wasn’t yet three years old. At that time, he demonstrated—in various ways of talking and asking—a particularly vivid interest in that part of the…
Memories of the Meldar: An Ottoman Jew’s Early Education
Did you go to a meldar as a child? Have any of you been so lucky and blessed? I am sure that, seeing these two questions, you will all object that you had no idea what a meldar was and that you went…
Social Hygiene of the Jews
For Jews, social hygiene embraces the entire domain of religious laws and customs of Judaism on maintaining the purity and health of the body. These traditions partially, and certainly at their core…
Interpolation of the Sokolover Rebbe
The [Babylonian] Talmud in tractate Sanhedrin [109b] brings a statement that when a stranger came to the city of Sodom, he would be placed on a bed. Someone who was taller than the bed would have his…
The Dance of the Demons
Meanwhile Reb Zalman, all undeterred, was arranging a match for Deborah, and one evening he arrived with a brand new proposal, one that was—in these hard modern times—almost too good to…
The Commanding Voice of Auschwitz
What does the Voice of Auschwitz command?
Jews are forbidden to hand Hitler posthumous victories. They are commanded to survive as Jews, lest the Jewish people perish. They are commanded to remember…
Farewell to Salonica: City at the Crossroads
Our classroom was on the upper floor and in the rear of the building. Its two large windows opened on a garden which, because it could be reached only by crossing M. Shalom’s apartment, was forbidden…
Bene Zion: A Religious-Moralistic Textbook for the Youth of the Israelite Nation
374. No man, in isolation, can gain for himself the means through which to satisfy his physical needs and develop his spiritual strength; he…
The Song of Our Forefather Jacob and His Sons
I want to recount a beautiful tale. I ask that the men relax. Listen, and see how marvelous it is how merciful God restores justice for us.
Jacob:
He said to his son, I wanted to send you to find out…