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.
Exercises in Practical Hebrew
“Are you at peace? Hast thou killed and also taken possession?”
(examples of interrogative sentences in a grammar book)
Vishniac’s Windows
How long this staring through a window
In an alley-way by few remembered,
Into the obscure, into a room
Empty of all but its walls
Where pictures hang all in shadow
But for one of mild eyes wide,
As…
Hear, O Israel
Hear O Israel, in the depths of our home
There lives alone the empty room
What will we do with it, that empty room
What will we do with it, that empty room
Shall we enter and shove ourselves between…
The Limestone
If it forms the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones,
Are constantly homesick for, this is chiefly
Because it dissolves in water.
—Auden, “In Praise of Limestone”
If beauty and truth were to…
Four Room House Plan
“Four-room” house plan, Iron Age II. The typical Israelite dwelling was a rectangular or square house of between roughly 500 and 1,200 square feet (50–110 sq m). It is often called a “four-room” or…
Tombs from Ketef Hinnom Cemetery
A group of elaborate tombs was found on the slopes of Jerusalem’s Hinnom Valley, including a cluster at Ketef Hinnom behind what is now the Menachem Begin Center. This is an artist's reconstruction of…
Amulet Depicting Isis Holding Horus
This faience amulet from Lachish depicts the Egyptian goddess Isis sitting on a throne and holding her son, the god Horus, on her lap, a common artistic motif in Egyptian amulets. The legs are broken…
Fathers and Brothers: A Memoir
The parting was not long in coming. My father died two months before I turned six.
To this day, I go to him at difficult times. Mostly to complain that he abandoned me. The handful of memories that he…
Ivory Relief of a Woman at a Window, Samaria
This ivory relief bears a common motif, found in ivories from Syria and nearby areas as well: a woman stares straight out from a window set in a triply recessed frame with a balustrade in front. Her…
Coin with Owl and Inscription
On this coin, the owl has lost some of the distinctive features of the Athenian prototypes. Instead of the large prominent eyes, the face is relatively small, and the eyes are even smaller. The bird’s…