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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.
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Ghost Stories

Superimposed upon my face in the mirror is my mother’s. I am about to comb my hair, but here she is, brushing hers, her thick, wavy, white hair. We quarrelled about hair. “D…

The Red Tent

My mother’s interview with the Grandmother went on late into the night. First, Rebecca took a long look at her daughter-in-law, betraying her shortsightedness by getting very close and peering into…

San Remo Drive

Would you state your name for the record? a voice intoned. Even before our father could reply, Bartie said, “Look, it’s Daddy.” “Sure enough,” said Arthur. “It’s Mister Norman. On the television from…

Bubba Esther, 1888

She was still upset, she wanted to tell me, she kept remembering his terrible hands: how she came, a young girl of seventeen, a freckled fairskinned Jew from Kovno to Hamburg with her uncle and…
Relief with hieroglyphs above standing figures while others sit and perform circumcisions.
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Circumcision in an Egyptian Relief

Circumcision in an Egyptian relief, Sakkara, Egypt, Sixth Dynasty (ca. 2350–2170 BCE). Priests perform circumcision on boys. The hieroglyphic legend reads “circumcision.” The hands of the boy on the…

Nokh Aushvits (After Auschwitz)

the poem is ugly & they make it uglier wherein the power resides that duncan did—or didn’t—understand when listening that evening to the other poet read he said “that was pure ugliness” & oh it was i…
Relief of two people impaling three people.
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Impaled Corpses at Lachish

Impaled corpses at Lachish, detail from Assyrian relief in the Nineveh palace of Sennacherib (reigned 705–681 BCE), depicting the conquest of Lachish in 701 BCE. For the full relief see Conquest of…
Relief of figure with six wings and headdress.
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Hybrid Creatures with Six Wings

Hybrid creatures with six wings, Syria, 10th or 9th century BCE. Numerous hybrid creatures, often winged, that combined features of various animals, are known from ancient art. Another example is the…

Lecture with Celan

How many know the number of creatures is endless? So many know, only a gasp in their questions is possible. All that fullness— of wounds that won’t scar over. pain’s grillework persisting in…

Song for Hannah Arendt

Out of being torn apart comes art. Out of being split in two comes me and you. HA HA! Out of being torn in three comes a logical poetry. (She laughed but not at poetry.) Out of the essential…