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 World Convention of YIVO (Yiddish Scientific Institute) upon the Tenth Anniversary of Its Founding,
Professor Fishl Shneerson (Warsaw): Out of great respect for YIVO…
Tractate: The Onset of the Messiah
4. [ . . . ] The Gaon of Vilna writes [in his Even Shelemah] that the second chapter of Vayishla? is the chapter of the “footsteps of the Messiah.” When Jacob returned from his…
Smugglers
Pantel the wagon driver stretches out under the covers and sits up, yawning. The house is dark but a faint light is just beginning to penetrate through the peepholes in the shutter.
“It’s…
When the Candle Was Burning
Father had been able to save a little from his earnings and felt that it would last till the end of the war—but he used that money to buy back those prayers shawls! So now we were penniless.
Father…
A Dancer
At home they called her “dummy” and other names like that because she was always so quiet and still, never stirring when she was called. When she was nine years old, she went to school and began…
Memento Mori
And if Moyshe-Leyb, the poet, tells
That he saw Death on the high waves—
Just as he sees himself in a mirror,
And it was in the morning, around ten—
Will they believe Moyshe-Leyb?
And if Moyshe…
Daughter of Babylon
Return to your ancient past
Aid your sister with education and culture
And people of Israel will once more be a nation.
Awake, daughter of Babylon, mother of knowledge
Take up in your hand the pen…
Kentucky
Wide, open, free lay the land,
Extending to far horizons.
The sandy red tract stretches
Far and strange and lonely,
Bordered by low wild plants
And unknown herbs
With…
Women-Poems I, II, VI
The women of our family will come to me in dreams at night and say:
Modestly we carried a pure blood across generations,
Bringing it to you like well-guarded wine from the kosher
Cellars of our…
The National Movement
Arise, shine, for thy light is come,
Shake thyself from the dust
Unlock the lock on your neck
Be saved from your enemy.
Awaken, get out of thy exile
Rise up from your degradation
Wake up from your…
Departure
The rain cleaned off the steep facade of houses;
I write upon the white and stony sheet
And feel how my tired hand so softly rouses
From love poems that always, sweetly, were a cheat.
I wake in the…
Stalinstan
Stalinstan,
Stalinstan,
Who is present and on hand
From the Party,
From the Union?
Who was on his way
Somewhere else today,
When a chain of men caught him
And then brought him
To…