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.
Sefer ha-zikuk (The Book of Expurgation)
1. Whenever the term idolaters appears, and it is not clearly referring…
Sefer yitnu (Book of “They Shall Offer”)
It is known that one who lacks books lacks knowledge, for a man’s knowledge is limited in its reach by the reach of his books; and there is no artist without tools. Many new books came…
Asleep in songs and lullabies
Asleep in songs and lullabies was my heart, while I was dreaming, imagining myself amidst poets, as eloquent and intelligent as the finest wine yeast.From my drunken slumber an illustrious man awoke…
Three Picture Poems
The turning wheel runs round and round.
It opens and closes the exit of my gate.
Noisily it turns for ruin and destruction.
My head is split, my entrails spilled.
It chases and it catches…
With devout accents, the beautiful Hebrew woman
With devout accents, the beautiful Hebrew woman
Implored the exalted choirs for their grace,
Indeed, midst heavenly stars, in sacred fires,
She holds supreme minds happily in her grip:
Upon the sound…
Shirat ha-yam (The Song at the Sea)
Then did Moses and the Children of Israel sing this song (Exodus 15:1). Before we explain the words of this song, it is appropriate to clarify its poetic structure. I maintain that we, the Israelite…
On the Edge of the World
Every day at siesta time, when under the scorching heat of the sun the little town of Kenadza was breathing its last, Madame Karsenty would settle down on the sofa in the living room where her son…
Hiding Places: A Father and His Sons Retrace Their Family’s Escape from the Holocaust
[…] I made the mistake of stopping in for Sabbath services. Dutifully I tried praying but was distracted by the dance of light reflecting from people’s wedding rings on the walls. When everyone stood…
Sigmund Freud
To Freud, all forms of religious observance were foolish and superstitious. His wife Martha, on the other hand, took religion much more seriously, as her grandfather had been a prominent rabbi in…
From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro
The life and literary undertakings of Isaac Orobio de Castro are symbolic of the fate and fortunes of the Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi diaspora in seventeenth-century western Europe. His passage…
Bodily Discharges and Impurity
The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: Speak to the Israelite people and say to them:
When any man has a discharge issuing from his member, he is unclean. [ . . . ]
When one with a discharge…
The Notion of a “Jewish Community” in France
The use of the notion of “community” to define French Judaism is not self-evident. On the one hand, if “community” renders the medieval kahal, the concept has a long history and has engendered any…