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.
Cake in Shape of Nude Female (Replica)
Cake mold in shape of nude female (replica), Cyprus, ca. 980–500 BCE. The mold, probably dating to the Iron Age II or a century later, emphasizes the nose, breasts, and genital region and likely would…
French Lessons
[…] On my first research trip to France as a professional scholar in the summer of 1982, I set out to find the only fascist intellectual discussed in my dissertation who was still alive; his name was…
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…
Cow and Calf
This drawing of a cow and her calf appears on the right side of a pithos (storage jar) from Kuntillet Ajrud. The cow and calf are a common motif associated with fertility and protection. Kuntillet…
Kabbalah and Criticism
Freud says that primal anxiety was toxic, and that the primal limitation was of inspiration. If the anxiety of influence be imaged as a lack of breathing space, then the voluntary limitation that…
Samaria Ostracon (A Shipment of Wine)
Samaria ostracon (A Shipment of Wine), early 8th century BCE, from the ruins of a building near the royal palace. The text can be read here.
Benjamin Disraeli, Karl Marx, and the Search for Identity
At first the contrast between them must seem very sharp: the first a somewhat fantastic figure, an ambitious opportunist, a social and political adventurer, flamboyant, over-dressed, the epitome of…
A Certain People
Change has been so rapid, in fact, that American Jews in their twenties and thirties inhabit a completely different world from that in which their parents grew up.
The essence of the change is that…
The Illusion of Jewish Unity
In the political drama playing on Israeli television, American Jews are shown as largely supporting Israel’s hard line. During Yitzhak Shamir’s visit to the United States in March, he addressed two…
If I Am Not for Myself...The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews
Jews are associated with liberalism the way the French are with wine: it is considered native to their region. […] As I use it, liberalism is a belief in…
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…