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.
Genealogies of Two Wandering Hebrew Melodies
It is well known that tunes of songs, no less than their texts, often provide an historical mirror of an exceedingly sharp focus. A special category of such songs are the so- called “migrating” or…
Zakhor: Jewish History and Memory
The Hebrew Zakhor—“Remember”—announces my elusive theme. Memory is always problematic, usually deceptive, sometimes treacherous. Proust knew this, and the English reader is deprived of the full force…
Language in Time of Revolution
As we look around us in contemporary America, we see large numbers of “Jews” or persons of Jewish origin (many of whom shed their recognizably Jewish names) in such areas as law, medicine…
Scripture Windows: Toward a Practice of Bibliodrama
Most simply described, Bibliodrama is a form of role-playing in which the roles played are taken from biblical texts. The roles may be those of characters who appear in the Bible…
Jewish Sensibility and the Photography of New York
[One] of the most evident features of New York photography has so far not been addressed by writers: the fact that, in every account, the great majority of the photographers concerned were or are Jews…
The Jewish Century
The Modern Age is the Jewish Age, and the twentieth century, in particular, is the Jewish Century. Modernization is about everyone becoming urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually…
Faith and Dogma in Judaism
One widespread misconception concerning Judaism is the notion that Judaism is a religion which is not rooted in dogma. […] To be sure, membership in the community of Israel is not contingent upon a…
Renewing the Covenant
I have been critical of the modern notions of the solitary self and self-validating universalism in the hope of permitting the consciousness of our particularity to…
Taking Hold of Torah: Jewish Commitment and Community in America
The Book of Leviticus is not terribly popular among American Jews of my acquaintance. […] Leviticus seems so repetitive, so anachronistic. […] [The] book is in many…
The Four Children
בָּרוּךְ הַמָּקוֹם בָּרוּךְ הוּא. בָּרוּךְ שֶׁנָּתָן תּוֹרָה לְעַמּוֹ יִשְׂרָאֵל. בָּרוּךְ.הוּא: כְּנֶגֶד אַרְבָּעָה בָנִים דִּבְּרָה תוֹרָה. אֶחָד חָכָם. וְאֶחָד רָשָׁעוְאֶחָד תָּם. וְאֶחָד שֶׁאֵינוֹ יוֹדֵֽעַ לִשְׁאוֹל…
Dayenu
“But what is dayenu? What is sufficient for us?” asks the Wise Daughter.
Dayenu
If Eve had been created in the image of God
and not as helper to Adam,
it would have sufficed.
Dayenu.
אִילוּ נוֹצְרַה…
Portrait of Tzara (Mask)
Janco and the subject of this portrait, poet Tristan Tzara (1896–1963), played leading roles in creating the Dada movement in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I. Janco made several masks that…