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.
Zohara’s Journey
I sometimes dream that I’m a prisoner. For days, years. I’m only free at night, for a few hours toward morning. During those hours I can walk around. But I don’t know where to go. All the people I…
Let the Survivors Check in First, Please!
“Shalom and good morning everyone, allow me to extend a warm and of course respectful welcome to you, our honored guests, on behalf of Viva Travel, on this Down Memory Lane package tour, including a…
Uncle Isidore
When I observe a toothless ex-violinist,
with more hair than face, sprawled like Karl Marx
on a park seat or slumped, dead or asleep,
in the central heat of a public library
I think of Uncle Isidore…
The Golem’s Circle
Rabbi Eleazar opened the palm of his hand
and let the fertile, virgin earth escape
He took pure water from the mountain spring
recited the two hundred and twenty-one alphabetical combinations
and…
A Prayer
Blessed art Thou, Lord, our God,
King of the Universe,
Who has kept us and protected us,
and supported us until this day
it would be better we had never seen.
You deprived us of nothing,
neither…
To Jewishness
As you were contained in
Or embodied by
Louise Schlossman
When she was a sophomore
At Walnut Hills
High School
In Cincinnati, Ohio,
I salute you
And thank you
For the fact
That she received
My kisses…
An Orphan in History: Retrieving a Jewish Legacy
In the spring of 1961, I flunked an exam that would have enabled me to write an honors thesis. In reality, it was a minor failure—I was spending most of my time at the Crimson building, where I was…
Daniel’s Story
“We are alive. We are human, with good and bad in us. That’s all we know for sure. We can’t create a new species or a new world. That’s been done. Now we have to live within those boundaries. What are…
Two Ibexes
In this detail from the left side of a pithos (storage jar) from Kuntillet Ajrud, two ibexes are eating the flora of a schematic tree, all set above a striding lion. These common motifs are typically…
From My Mother’s Kitchen: Recipes and Reminiscences
The Street was my father’s life. He was a commission merchant in Washington Market, contracting for crops from farmers in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, California, Texas, and just about everywhere…
Magyar Jew or Jewish Magyar?
The belated adoption of the first law of Jewish emancipation has led to the assumption that it had no practical value. True as this statement may be technically, it nevertheless needs further…