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 Call of the Wandering Jew
Hot lava flows in my veins to-night,
My nerves are jangling mad,
The Joy of Life is a tinsel gaud,
The sweetest songs sound sad.
I feel the drag of the Wanderlust,
I see the ghosts stream by…
Still Life
Bread and cheese and honey on a simple table.
The tea beckons golden
In two thin glasses.
Green, cool and fresh,
The water jug, veiled in dew.
On the edge a woman’s handkerchief.
Next to it, a…
Letter to Y. H. Brenner
More than once I began writing to you, and each time I took my pen in my hand I felt in my inner heart that in writing I will say nothing—to see you face to face, heart to heart, and to fall on each…
Book of Memoirs
On the third August 1889 I departed from London for South Africa on the steamship Drummond Castle. There were two hundred passengers comprising British, Hollanders, Germans and eleven Jews. We Jews…
Old Wooden Synagogues in Polish Lithuania
Art is ultimately tantamount to nature if only we understand it somewhat more broadly and look at man as a natural phenomenon. As the saying goes, no matter how you try to drive nature out through the…
Reflections on the Purity, or Otherwise, of the Bene Israel Race in India
“Is the Bene-Israel in India a pure Jew by descent” is the question often asked and discussed. There has been considerable literature on the subject especially by aliens, even such as can claim little…
A Turning Point in the History of the Jewish Labor Movement
Speech delivered at the May meeting of agitators in Vilna in 1895.
Dear comrades!
Today, every group of the fighting proletariat has marked successes in its activities. It will be most appropriate to…
The Third Party Convention
The Bund has inscribed on its banner the demand for equal civil rights for the Jews. At the Convention the opinion was expressed that Jewish Social Democracy deals with the needs of the Jewish…
A European Feminist Decries Sex Trafficking in the Ottoman Empire
Constantinople [Istanbul], April 8, 1911
Dear Mrs. N.,
I hear unanimously and consistently that the market [for prostitution—Eds.] in Constantinople is ninety percent Jewish women, that almost all…
Zionism and the Jewish Women of America
New York January 17, 1915
Dear Mrs. Julius Rosenwald,
Let me congratulate you and Palestine upon having secured as you tell me in your telegram, a “splendid response from a local” [Chicago Jewish…
Hebraism and Universalism in Hebrew Literature
Mr. [Israel Ḥayim] Taviov says: “Those who vehemently demand a large and broad literature in the Hebrew language, comprising all branches of wisdom and science—they are the ultranationalists of the…
A Reply to Mr. Sholem Aleichem
Precisely in the case of a new and difficult question like “Jewish folk-music,” [ . . . ] it is necessary to establish as much as possible [its] specific, objective characteristics . . . You make fun…