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.
Moses Hess
The Central Committee of the German Zionist Federation [Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland] asked me to collect the Jewish essays by Moses Hess and to edit them on the occasion of the…
Suicide
The only essential difference between Catholicism and Protestantism is that the second permits free inquiry to a far greater degree than the first. Of course, Catholicism by the very fact that it is…
An Ottoman Jewish Zionist Volunteers for the Greek Army
Let me be frank: I was there, but as a Zionist. I thought Judaism and Zionism in particular needed to be represented in some way. It was a grand idea, a matter of defending a supreme liberty. Jews…
My Life as German and Jew
I was born and raised in Fuerth, a predominantly Protestant manufacturing city of Middle Franconia, with a large Jewish community consisting principally of artisans and tradesmen. The Jews formed…
The Jewish Census (Judenzählung)
At midnight a soft hand touched me: “Get up.” I stepped outside the silent sleeping barracks and saw: Azrael, the angel who reigns over the dead rushed down from the night firmament, all revenge…
Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors
In a phrase of Hermann Cohen, Maimonides is the “classic of rationalism” in Judaism. This phrase appears to us to be correct in a stricter sense than Cohen may have intended: Maimonides’…
Ha-Shiloaḥ: Our Goal
[ . . . ] However, the new Ha-Shiloaḥ will also be different from its predecessor in many important respects. Without a doubt, Hebrew literature has evolved and accomplished much over the past fifteen…
Breakdown and Bereavement
It was an afternoon in the middle of April when the accident occurred. The year was a leap year, rainy and warm, and on that summery spring day in the commune he had already been given the job of…
Deteriorating (In Defense of Y. H. Brenner)
Brenner sinned. He went and published terrible heretical remarks, implying that the fundamental question is not the question of the Jewish religion, but the question of the place of productive work…