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.
Exodus and Revolution
The Exodus story serves as more than a religious or moral narrative. Its influence has shaped the fundamental paradigms of Western political thought to this day.
Without Hitler—No Israel? The Historical Dimensions of the Founding of the State of Israel
If it hadn’t been for Hitler there would be no Israel. If there had been no Holocaust there would be no Jewish State today. How often this line of reasoning is used! Even the German-British writer…
Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Identity
We propose Diaspora as a theoretical and historical model to replace national self-determination. To be sure, this would be an idealized Diaspora generalized from those situations in Jewish history…
Intra-Jewish Conflict in Israel: White Jews, Black Jews
Defining and establishing Mizrahim as Edot haMizrah served to prevent, until the early 1980s, any attempt to create a collective Mizrahi identity as an alternative to the general Israeli identity…
The Coming of Lilith: Toward a Feminist Theology
In the beginning, the Lord God formed Adam and Lilith from the dust of the ground and breathed into their nostrils the breath of life. Created from the same source, both having been formed from the…
Principles of Spiritual Activism
Asked what the function of a rabbi is, Rabbi Hayyim of Brisk replied: “To redress the grievances of those who are abandoned and alone…
Ehyeh: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow
To be human is to remember. To lose memory is to lose a piece of ourselves. To lose all of memory is one of the great human tragedies; some part (though surely not all) of the divine light within us…
The Bramble and the Pomegranate (The Words of Ahiqar)
The [bram]ble sent a message to the pomegranate as follows: “Dear Pomegranate, what good are all [your] thorns [to him who tou]ches your [fru]it?” The [pome] granate replied to the bramble, “You are…
Yidishe Folkspartei Election Poster
The Folkspartei (Folk Party), which championed the goal of Jewish national autonomy in the diaspora, was founded in Saint Petersburg in 1906 under the leadership of the historian Simon Dubnow and…