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.
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…
A Dancer
At home they called her “dummy” and other names like that because she was always so quiet and still, never stirring when she was called. When she was nine years old, she went to school and began…
Azarel
Saturday is the worst of the week. Whenever I touch anything on this day, straightway there comes a voice: Don’t do that, today it’s a sin.
“Sin?” I ask.
Says Mother: “Sin is that for which the Good…
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…
Memento Mori
And if Moyshe-Leyb, the poet, tells
That he saw Death on the high waves—
Just as he sees himself in a mirror,
And it was in the morning, around ten—
Will they believe Moyshe-Leyb?
And if Moyshe…
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…
A Rebuttal to Opotowski
As soon as [Opotowski] came, he and the others were told that their chances of securing employment in a region where there are few Jews will be much better if they do not have such long beards. He and…
Etiquette: Clothing, Manners, and Sexual Behavior
Clothing is an art, and it requires talent from women and men alike. This talent, however, is innate to people. It is a talent that every woman and every man can develop by observing…
Departure
The rain cleaned off the steep facade of houses;
I write upon the white and stony sheet
And feel how my tired hand so softly rouses
From love poems that always, sweetly, were a cheat.
I wake in the…
And Thus, Perhaps, I Will Reflect . . . ?
I lived, but as for living I was shiftless in my life,
knew always I’d be buried here when all was done,
that year layers itself upon year, clod on clod, stone on stone,
that in the chill and wormy…
Palestine Dances!
Against the setting sun, in the fields near a kevutzah in Palestine, a group of young halutzim are dancing. All day long they have worked hard on the land. The morrow brings another day of…
A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto
If one looks closely at the passers-by in the streets of the Warsaw ghetto one can see that the overwhelming majority of them are not originally from Warsaw, but are from…