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.
I Am in Babylon Dying
The bell pursues me. It is time to die.
It is the hour when no man works. I feel
My time fill up with leaves like a dry well
With many autumns over it, leaves that I
Leave to sigh in the ears of my…
Grandfather Is Facing Death
Not as if it were an accident,
not as if he were leaving Prague and coming to Havana,
eight years later bringing Mama,
to put her behind the cash register,
instill certain principles,
give her little…
Letter from Rebecca Samuel to Her Parents
Dear Parents:
I hope my letter will ease your mind. You can now be reassured and send me one of the family to Charleston, South Carolina. This is the place to which, with God’s help, we will go after…
The Wondrous Tale of Alroy
And now for my style. I must frankly confess that I have invented a new one. I am conscious of the hazard of such innovation, but I have not adopted my system without long meditation, and a…
Dor ve-dorshav (A Generation and Its Seekers)
Now when I was a young lad, sitting amidst the dust of the feet of those bound up with the houses of study, I would never hear them speaking anything sensible about the Hasidim, explaining and…
Yidishe Mitsves (Jewish Good Deeds)
The synagogues where older and more modest congregants pray are spared to some extent. It is a good thing that they are closed all day and all night and are opened only for early morning prayers and…
Serkele
Reb Shmelke:
Well, I can see that you are a clever man, so I will tell you the whole story in brief. [He takes a drink.] As you see me before you, I’m called Reb Smelke [Shmelke, as pronounced by a…
Tales of Hoffmann
Tales of Hoffmann, an opéra fantastique, is the final work of composer Jacques Offenbach, who died four months before its premiere in Paris in 1881. At the time of Offenbach’s death, the opera was…
Whisky
So let’s drink whisky, brothers—
let’s hope we live to drink again.
Let’s drink now—enough of eating.
How can you forget about whisky for so long!
If we didn’t have whisky,
how would we live in this…
Scuola Italiana, Venice
The Scuola Italiana is one of five synagogues in the Venetian ghetto, and its smallest. In 1575, the Italian Jewish community established the synagogue in a preexisting building because of a law…
The Mikve Israel-Emanuel Synagogue, Interior
The Mikve Israel-Emanuel is a synagogue that served the Spanish Portuguese Jewish community in Curaçao (and continues to function today as a Reconstructionist congregation). This synagogue is the…
Medal of Doña Gracia the Younger
Beatriz Mendes Beneviste (Doña Gracia the Younger) was born in 1540 in Antwerp. She was the niece of the wealthy and influential Doña Gracia Nasi. In 1544, the family, New Christians of Portuguese…