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.
Gayness and God: Wrestlings of an Orthodox Rabbi
I am an Orthodox rabbi and I am gay. For a long while I denied, rejected, railed against this truth. The life story that I had wanted—wife, kids, and a family that modeled Torah and hesed—turned out…
We Turn Our Thoughts
We turn our thoughts to yesterday…to a world that lives only in our memory.
As we recall the days gone by, we know the past is irretrievable.
Yet—through the gift of memory, we recapture treasured…
Leonard Bernstein
Al Hirschfeld was most famous for his caricatures of actors, musicians, and other figures from the arts and public life. He himself preferred to be known as a “characterist.” After the birth of his…
The Treasure
Yakhne-Brayne [Reading slowly and with difficulty so that the words run together in a monotone.]:“And God caused the Temple to be destroyed and said, ‘I will remember your sins and you will devour…
Ewer and Basin
This ewer and basin from Turkey were used to wash hands ritually during the Passover seder. Owned by the Benguiat family, a large and prominent Sephardic family in the Ottoman Empire, the objects…
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…
Interior of the Beth Elohim Synagogue Charleston, South Carolina (Solomon Nunes Carvalho)
The only image of the interior of the first synagogue of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, a congregation established in Charleston in 1749, is this picture, painted from memory by Solomon Nunes Carvalho. The…
A Sephardi Émigré Encourages Levantine Jews to Move to Mexico
It is a great pleasure for me to have this occasion, offered to me by the serial La Luz, to inform readers of the current situation in the Republic of Mexico, and to mention some of the reasons why…
We Speak and Write This Language against Our Will
Dear Vara of my soul,
Wherever it may be, I am always hit in the face by a pet peeve, some vexation and angst, due to the misbehavior of certain of our women who still do not know whether they are in…
The Maccabees
Today it is possible for us to observe the process of Hellenization in individual features only. But these features are sufficiently significant to enable…
The Essence of Judaism (Second Edition)
During the thousands of years of its history, Judaism has learned and experienced a good deal. In its people the commanding urge to think further, to struggle with ideas, has…
The Song of the Dying: To the History of Jewish Creativity under the Nazi Occupation
Among the illegal publications that appeared in Poland during the Nazi occupation, one can find a small anthology of poems entitled Z otchlani, from the Abyss. This modest volume, published by the…