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.
The Jewish Problem and the Socialist Jewish State
A future Jewish state founded on capitalism is impossible for technological reasons, as well. Within the limits of petty capitalism, it is not possible to mechanize agriculture and to create large…
Our Demands
1.
In a country like Russia where various nations live mixed together, the responsibility of disseminating culture…
Speech: On American Judaism
There is no room for Ghetto Judaism in America. Look at any of the creeds and churches in our free land! They are all more tolerant, more liberal, more humane and sympathetic in their mutual relations…
Marx on Judaism and Judaism in Marx
The echo that Marx’s writing arouses in Jews’ hearts provides clearer evidence [of Marx’s influence on Judaism].As everybody knows, a Jewish proletariat did not exist during Marx’s lifetime, certainly…
Jewish Ethnopoetics
Dedicated to my sister and friend Sarah Rappoport
A people’s poetry depicts, vividly and in clear relief, the hidden inner world of national life, to which we are admitted neither by the pen of the…
How Does One Produce Culture?
When the [Yiddish language] culture conference gathered in Czernowitz [in September, 1908], I was against it. When the culture conference gathered in Berlin, I voiced my doubts about it. Now that a…
Responsum: On Gender Transition
Question: Is a proper get [divorce certificate] necessary in the following circumstance: a certain man married a young Jewish woman, and was with her in the manner of men and women, but after some…
Modern Judaism in Orient and Occident (East and West)
The author is no novice in this area of research; however, thirty years have passed since he was last engaged deeply in the history of religion. During the ten years of his stay on the banks of the…
Hey, Women . . .
Hey, women, spotted with typhus and riddled with rakes of fingers
Across autumn heads of woe,
Are you fruitful? Do you multiply? How many times each?
In whorehouses? On floors?
In the stable? In…
Russia
Russia! If my faith in you were any less great
I might have said something different.
I might have complained: You have led us astray,
And seduced us young wandering gypsies.
Precious to us is each…
Unity
When God’s holy law is read out
Do you think I forget one bold lust?
And enjoying each lust with fearing,
Do you think I know not God’s law?
Translated by David Soeterndorp.
Yosef de la Reina
A mountain in the desert.
On the desert mountain—
Nine,
Nine tall men.
There must be something here—
The Nine want something here—
And the tenth man?
He stands at the head of them…