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 Book of Israel
God, Robin and me had the funniest time trying to decide. I mean it was bizarre. I suppose we had always assumed we would do it, but then, well, when you actually think…
The Gold of Haim-Shaye
Nuska Shkolnik, who had come on a four-day leave, cried those four straight. He’d been a whiner since childhood, and Lyovka never did manage to knock that vice out of him. All anyone had to do was…
Europe
I have always backed off from the word.
In the Thirties Europe meant French. But was it only then? Not in earlier centuries? A bloody lesson learned that Europe was Balmazújváros as well as Notre…
Cottonmouth Country
Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras.
And there were other signs
That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us
By land: among the pines
An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss
Reared in the…
Mother’s Day, Coney Island: Metropolitan Jewish Geriatric Home
And veins web her temples,
and my father pins on the orchid,
and my card names her the best mother.
But Alzheimer’s or arteriosclerosis (the end is the same)
praises him ad nauseum,
but accuses my…
Fringes/tassels on Garments of "Asiatics"
Fringes/tassels on garments of “Asiatics.” In Egyptian art, tassels are a typical feature of the garb of Asiatics, the peoples of Canaan/Israel and Syria, as in this mural from the tomb of Pharaoh…
In a Nutshell
Credo in a kind of
American jewish Hamlet-like
bagel, too round for action
yet leavened enough by contact
with the near-dead past—you call it
landscape, I call it history—to provide
a layered vantage…
Hybrid Creatures with Four Wings Supporting Deity in Persian Seal Impression
Hybrid creatures with four wings supporting deity in Persian seal impression, 6th or 5th century BCE. Biblical imagery and ancient Near Eastern iconography offer some parallels to the creatures…
Papyrus, Rolled, Folded, and Sealed
Papyrus, rolled, folded, and sealed, Elephantine, Egypt, 5th century BCE. See also Papyrus, Rolled and Sealed. The Elephantine papyri provide historical documentation about the members of a Jewish…
Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood
Stanislaw often told me how much he liked my company, and sometimes he wondered about my Jewishness: “Look at yourself! You cannot be Jewish!” he would exclaim. And yet whenever he spoke to me about…
Out of Egypt
Egyptian Jewish American author André Aciman describes celebrating his last Seder in Egypt with his bags packed to leave his homeland for good.