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.
Hittite Couple Sacrificing to Bull
Hittite couple sacrificing to bull, Alaça Hüyük, Turkey. In this relief, a king and queen, or perhaps a priest and priestess, stand at an altar and make an offering before a bull. On the symbolism of…
Shirt
The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians
Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking…
Lithuania
…I remember a woman
who sat on the pot where the apples cooked in the cold
basement, her face black from smoke. And here, near this brick
building with a red tile roof, is one of our family, Mausha
V…
The Family Tree
I have a lovely period photo, sepia coloured, with all the characters in a row, and their gentle trusting faces, photograph faces that nobody ever looks at now. They are the shifbrider, the ship…
Solidarity and Treason: Resistance and Exile, 1933-1940
As I was crossing Alexanderplatz on the first of April, I noticed a crowd of people gathering near the U-Bahn station at the other end of the square. The loudspeakers blared across the open space,…
Hotel Bolivia: The Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism
Among the very few possessions my parents were permitted to take with them when they emigrated as refugees from Austria to Bolivia in June 1939 was a box camera and two family photo…
Number the Stars
The officer stared at them grimly.
“Now,” Mama said in a strong voice, “you have seen that we are not hiding anything. May my children go back to bed?”
The officer ignored her. Suddenly he grabbed a…
Figures Looking over City Wall
These fragments of a mural from Kuntillet Ajrud show two human heads, facing left and looking out over their city’s wall, which is flanked by towers. The mural may have been part of a military scene…
Scribes Writing Lists
Scribes writing lists, Nimrud, late eighth century BCE. Two Assyrian scribes, standing side by side, make lists of booty as it comes in. One writes on a clay tablet and the other writes on a scroll.
Who Shall Bear Guilt for the Holocaust?
A simple searing truth emerges from the vast body of research and writing on the Holocaust. It is that European Jewry was ground to dust between the twin millstones of a murderous Nazi intent and a…
The State of the Jews, 1982: Reflections on Jewish Normality, Agony and Glory
For two hundred years, Jews have obsessively sought to achieve two goals—the collective normality of the Jewish people, and the ability to control their own destiny. Since 1782, these goals have been…
Commandments and Concerns: Jewish Religious Education in Secular Society
This book deals with the problem of religion in contemporary Jewish education. It grew out of my thinking and teaching about Jewish education, which made me realize that religion is always on the…