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 Five
This episode occurred on Deribasov Street, about two years after the beginning of our story.
At that time our editorial office was located at the upper end of the street, in the…
Return, Israel
A statement of reproof and a reminder and warning and a correction to our brothers, the Jews of Tunis, may the Almighty maintain it, amen, may God preserve them and sustain them, written by the dayyan…
A Man and His Parrot
It is barely six in the morning and the stars are still out, but Manuel has to get up.
It isn’t a job that wakes him. That obligation used to get him right to his feet, but now? Now just getting…
The History of Borsszem Janko (Johnny Peppercorn)
I was lying in bed sick when, on January 5th, 1868, the first issue came out. Understandably, the party line and the competition tried to alienate from me János Jankó, the illustrator of the…
Di shvue (The Oath)
Brothers and sisters—all working poor
Wherever you might be scattered on earth
This banner’s now waiting for you, together.
Waving, wrathful, this flag is blood red.
We swear! We swear by the…
Erotica et Rustica
1.
Eyner hot lib a kale mit a sakh gelt, der anderer hot lib a kale on a hemd.
Some like a bride with a lot of money, others like a bride without a stitch of clothes.
Khuts…
Grave of the Bride and Groom
In many shtetls throughout Podolye and Volhynia we often find a mound next to the synagogue. Surrounded by a traditional cemetery fence, the mound is known as the Grave for the Bride and Groom. And…
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…
Letters from Westerbork
Finding something to say about Westerbork is also difficult because of its ambiguous character. On the one hand it is a stable community in the making, a forced one to be sure, yet with all the…
Blood
On the nights before Passover, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur, my mother would send me to the butcher with some birds to be slaughtered according to ritual so the meat would be kosher—that is, clean…