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.
To Be a Jew in France in 1982
Confronted by difficult problems after 1945 (reconstruction of a community life after the physical and material losses of the Second World War, integration of successive and ever more numerous waves…
Eternally Waiting
Can Jews remain in East-Central Europe? That is the question.
Hungary has between eighty and a hundred thousand Jews, Romania about twenty thousand, the rest of the countries a few thousand each. Jews…
Force Fields: Between Intellectual History and Cultural Critique
Leaving the museum, our small party walked the fifteen minutes out of the center of town it takes to get to the business end of Theresienstadt, the so-called “Small Fortress.” First constructed in the…
Has Israel’s Victimization of the Palestinians Been the Primary Cause of the Arab-Israeli Conflict?
Israel is the cause of the Arab–Israeli conflict.
Keep Halacha Out of the Courts
The decision of 15 February 1983 by the New York State Court of Appeals in the Case of Avitzur v. Avitzur has been hailed by religious and legal scholars alike. The decision recognized…
Looking Back at Lot’s Wife
It was one of the stories from Genesis that most frightened me as a child: the story of Lot’s wife.
She was told not to look, and she looked; and her punishment came swift and horrible. Frozen in…
Where Is My Light?
Where is my light? My light is in me.
Where is my hope? My hope is in me.
Where is my strength? My strength is in me,
And in you.
The Definitive Orange on the Seder Plate Story
The creator of the popular ritual of placing an orange on the Seder plate describes exactly how this innovation arose, its intended significance, and the problematic erasure of its origins.