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.
In Babylon
Emmanuel Hollander worked at, and believed in progress, but progress was not a religious notion for him, as it was for his future wife. He was an engineer and knew that every machine began as a…
Exotic Birds
During the bitterest days of my European exile, I turn to the photo album where I keep, along with more recent memories, a few images from my childhood—images that enlarged and corrected, come back to…
Politics
No, Moshe was not a serious Jewish boy. He was not committed to the history of the Jewish people. If he were asked to locate Tel Aviv on a map of Israel, I am not sure that Moshe could have done it.
I…
Lord of the World
Please, increase the intensity of your signals.
Here I
can’t hear, can’t know, if you’ve
stuck another iron flower in the lapel
of the antenna. You’re so delicate. Why
are you so soft, why are you…
Circumcision in an Egyptian Relief
Circumcision in an Egyptian relief, Sakkara, Egypt, Sixth Dynasty (ca. 2350–2170 BCE). Priests perform circumcision on boys. The hieroglyphic legend reads “circumcision.” The hands of the boy on the…
Lot (puru), Assyria
Lot (puru), Assyria, 8th century BCE. The inscription identifies this as a lot (puru—the Akkadian form of Hebrew pur, the word used in Esther 3:7) that belonged to an Assyrian official named Yahalu…
Prisoners, Naked and Bound, in Embossed Relief
Prisoners, naked and bound, in embossed relief, Assyria, Iron Age II, 9th century BCE. These prisoners, from a city in Syria, were conquered by the army of Shalmaneser III, King of Assyria (reigned…
The Tongue Set Free
Ruschuk, on the lower Danube, where I came into the world, was a marvelous city for a child, and if I say that Ruschuk is in Bulgaria, then I am giving an inadequate picture of it. For…
Tomb of Pharaoh’s Daughter
The cemetery in the village of Silwan, on the hill east of the City of David, included some aboveground tombs, cut out from the cliffs on three or four sides so that they look like buildings. These…
The Life and Adventures of a Provincial Soul: A Poema
“The comparative image of Natal’ia Rostova and Tat’iana Larina”—indeed, which one of them would have worked better on the Line?
The mid-1990s, the desert, a profitable little newly fledged factory on…
Baghdad, Yesterday
My parents had been married for five years when I was born, the second child after my sister, and, as far back as I can remember, I never heard them quarreling. It is possible that they…
The Rabbi’s Girls
The first two nights of Passover we had big Seders, which are festive dinners. Everyone wore their best clothes, and Mama cooked special traditional foods like chicken soup with matzo balls and potato…