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.
To the Common Man
When they begin to plaster the walls
With freshly printed proclamations,
When black print sounds alarm
Calling “To the People” and “To Soldiers”
And ruffians and adolescents
Are taken in by their…
Zangwill
Someone gathered rich apples, rich corn,
Grown of your heart and your brain,
And in me, as a loft, has stored
Some of the fruit and grain.
The loft smells sweet with its store:
The corn for making…
Salute
There are things in this country too—
And if they find no streetlamp pole,
There will be a tree—and that means clearly
That a Negro over twenty years old
May hate all things which spire
To hold a man…
Palestine Dances!
Against the setting sun, in the fields near a kevutzah in Palestine, a group of young halutzim are dancing. All day long they have worked hard on the land. The morrow brings another day of…
Self-Hatred among Jews
That self-hatred is present among Jews is a fact that the non-Jew would hardly believe, but which is well known among the Jews themselves. It is a phenomenon which has been observed ever since the…
Retribution Is Not Enough
We Jews who live in the staid serenity of America have failed to grasp the immensity of the tragedy which has befallen our people and this failure is perhaps the greatest part of the tragedy. Were the…
The Situation of the Jewish Writer
All discussions pertaining to the Jews must begin with some very gloomy observations. The Jews are, everywhere, a minority group, and it is a particular misfortune these days to be a minority group in…
A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto
If one looks closely at the passers-by in the streets of the Warsaw ghetto one can see that the overwhelming majority of them are not originally from Warsaw, but are from…
Blood
On the nights before Passover, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur, my mother would send me to the butcher with some birds to be slaughtered according to ritual so the meat would be kosher—that is, clean…
Never Say
Inspired by the Warsaw ghetto uprising, this hymn became the anthem of the Vilna partisan fighters and many other Jewish efforts to resist the Nazis.
L’Arche, Dictionary of French Judaism, “Ashkenaz”
Ashkenaz, a descendant of the sons of Noah, grandson of Japheth, son of Gomer (Genesis 10:3).
It was in a rather ancient period in the history of the diaspora that the term Ashkenazim, or descendants…
Inaugural Issue of Soviet Homeland
Dear Reader!
We are placing in your hands this first number of Sovetish heymland [Soviet Homeland]. In it you will feel the breath of our times. You will receive news of literary life and hear the…