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 Ignoramus: A Cultural Sketch
Aron Wolf often terrified us children, and yet he was one of the most harmless people one can imagine. He never hurt anyone, nor did he ever approach any of us with as much as a word.
But…
Outlines of Jewish History
Co-incident with the founding of relief associations was the establishment of the Jewish orders, among which the first was the B’ne B’rith, chiefly for…
Heder
Jacques Brandon set his painting of a heder, a traditional Jewish elementary school for boys, in a Mediterranean or Near Eastern location or in an imagined distant past. The boys are dressed in white…
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
Religious forces are in fact only transfigured collective forces, that is, moral forces; they are made of ideas and feelings that the…
The Jewish State
The idea which I have developed in this pamphlet is a very old one: the restoration of The Jewish State.
The world resounds with outcries against the Jews, and these outcries have awakened the…
Lunacharsky and Hebrew
During the summer of 5679 [1919] the government suddenly stopped supporting Tarbut and its schools, and after regaining our composure, we decided to address [Anatoly] Lunacharsky regarding this…
Our War Experience
This was the psychological state we were in when the war arrived. The war was not a political issue for us. We were thinking neither about the question of war guilt nor about a victorious outcome; we…
Testimony at the Eichmann Trial
Presiding Judge: I declare the sixty-eighth Session of the trial open.Decision No. 72We confirm the request of the Attorney General and will permit the…
Nine Suitcases
These nocturnal passenger trains in wartime have their own peculiar sounds. The deportation wagons have a way of screeching, like an eagle or a vulture—whereas this kind of train whines and groans as…
In the Grip of Cross-Currents
Now that the cup of poison is broken, there is no way out but to drink the cup of sorrows. . . .
My affirmation of life demanded that I should dedicate all the powers…
Givat ha-moreh [Commentary to Maimonides’ Moreh nevukhim, Guide for the Perplexed]
The telos (takhlit) of man’s activities, in the aspect (behinah) of having will and choice, is the ultimate human good (ha’hatslahah ha’enoshi’it). This excellence necessarily comes after the…
The Rigors of Jewish Historiography
The historiography of no people is so beset with the pretentious and condemnatory views of dilettantes as is that of the Israelites, which everyone fancies to know from the relevant sources. Thus, no…