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.
Ghetto Folklore
The Führer inquires of General Franco, “Comrade, how did you solve the Jewish problem?”
Franco answers, “I instituted the yellow badge.”
“That’s nothing,” says Hitler. “I imposed tributes…
An Act of Affirmation
It is traditional to begin a new magazine with brave declarations. If we do not, we trust we shall be forgiven.
We begin at a moment heavy with a sense of human destiny. Every schoolboy who listens to…
Can Heaven Be Void?
I am in hiding in a loft over a stable, in a village, with good people. The risk of death hovers over me, as it does over all Jews these days, and the slightest lapse of vigilance on my…
The Nazarene
“‘Do you want me to release to you your King of the Jews?’ asked Pilate of the multitude.
“‘What is that? What does he say?’
“‘The Procurator asks whom shall he release to you for the festival: Bar…
A Contract
Things were looking pretty bleak, when my wife’s prewar acquaintance brought a ray of hope into our small room.
If you too were an artist, you might be able to appreciate how impatiently my wife and I…
Cain and Abel
Dost thou sleep, my brother Abel,
That thou art so wonderfully fair?
Never have I seen thee
As beautiful before.
Does the beauty lie in my ax,
Or is it, perhaps, in thee?
Before the day is done,
Spe…
L’Arche, Dictionary of French Judaism, “Abraham”
The Jewish man is first and foremost the Hebrew man, and the Jewish man, since he is Hebrew, is the man of origins. Origins of what? Origins of what all of us are, origins of Western as well as…
Jewish Artists from North Africa
A retrospective exhibit these last few weeks at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris—perhaps too generously big an undertaking—has allowed a wider public to appreciate the originality and importance of…
A Visit to the Mellah
On the third morning, as soon as I was alone, I found the way to the mellah [in Marrakesh]. I came to an intersection where many Jews were standing around. Traffic was streaming past them and around a…
Jacob the Liar
And the resistance, I will be asked: Where is the resistance? Could it be that the heroes are gathering in the shoe factory or in the freight yard, at least a few? Is it possible that at the ghetto’s…
The Hara of Tunis: The Evolution of a North-African Ghetto
The Jews of Tunis have not been confined to the hara for a long time now. Since the end of the last century, those acquiring a degree of ease have abandoned it and…
Boil Me No Melting Pots, Dream Me No Dreams
When the fathers of Confederation built this country in 1867, there was universal agreement among all Canadians, English- and French-speaking, that there was no place for the American Dream on the…