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.
We Must Decide!
After long deliberation, I concluded that we would be making a grave mistake if we did not participate in the upcoming kehilah electio…
Yiddish and Jewishness
The world is wicked. To us Jews—of course and of course. And if we are facing destruction, we must be ready, we must be armed against destruction. Fascism wants to exterminate us. It is a war on death…
Memoirs of a Jewish Colonist
I. Of Pimps, Prostitutes, and Other SeducersWe saw some ten richly-dressed women, accompanied by fat-bellied men in top hats, standing at the green metal gate of the immigrants’ hotel. Through the…
Wailing Wall
In these days when Jews are being killed in Palestine, I chose to go to Grenadierstrasse—not to Jerusalem. I had the feeling it was better to be with the bereaved than the dead. I paid a condolence…
A Peculiar Treasure
On Saturdays, and on unusually busy days when my father could not take the time to come home to the noon dinner, it became my duty to take his midday meal down to him, very carefully packed in a large…
The Role of Linguistic Folklore in Yiddish Literature
Linguistic folklore in literature is a component of realistic style. At first, new or renewed literature is usually realistic. The same reasons that introduce…
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…