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.
Gedali
On the eve of the Sabbath I am always tormented by the dense sorrow of memory. In the past on these evenings, my grandfather’s yellow beard caressed the volumes of Ibn Ezra. My old grandmother, in her…
Bondy Jr.
At the Realschule fathers and mothers were lined up in single file in the director’s room. Parents who took the occasion very seriously appeared in couples with their young hopefuls. The director…
Manifesto
Many skeptics have denied the existence of Jewish music. Some lump it together with Oriental music; others refuse to admit its independence a priori, by virtue of the nomadic fate of the Jews, who…
Making Jam
Aunt Feiga is making jam today. She has to hurry. The raspberry season will soon be over. So Aunt Feiga is all in a swivet; she has bought a huge bowl of raspberries and fifteen pounds of sugar and is…
The Library, Center of Social and Cultural Life
In this city there are, in effect, for an approximate total of 60,000 Jews, about thirty Israelite culture groups, which are developing with relative prosperity and an excellent measure of success…
Tendencies in Jewish Education
3.
There is no doubt that the Jewish parochial school is the easiest and most alluring method of preserving Jewish religious life in…
Awake and Sing!
One year later, a Sunday afternoon. The front room. Jacob is giving his son Mordecai [Uncle Morty] a haircut, newspapers spread around the base of the chair. Moe is reading a newspaper, l…
The Open Grave
Crowds of people had been gathering since dawn at the morgue next to the city hospital. Drowsy, shivering, in damp gray clothes, they warmed themselves by huddling in one another’s breath. Their faces…
Letter to Rabbi Jacob Moses Karpas against Zionism
May he be written and sealed immediately for good, long life—the honored rabbi, the splendid gentleman, the sharp and erudite, God-fearing, distinguished, may his name be honored, our teacher, R…
Day Grows Darker
Day grows darker
And darker.
Mobs are advancing on the town,
Mobs clotted with blood,
Made remorseless by killing children,
Lustfully they advance,
To rip off heads,
Feeble, melancholy heads.
They…
Simkhe Platke, or the Universal Swindler
Now in that same shtetl there lived a youth named Shimen, but he was nicknamed Simkhe (joy, celebration) and Plakhte (coarse cloth) because he was barefoot and almost naked and that was all he wore…