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 Prophet and Other Stories
All illusions lost, the only thing really left for him to do was to take that step. The gangplank already hauled off, and the last whistle blown, the steamship would weigh anchor. He again looked at…
Paraphrase
The Bible tells us that from the heights
Moses blessed the children of Israel,
showing them God’s Promised Land,
where Moses himself never entered.
Like ships passing by when land is in sight
so…
The Root and the Bough: The Epic of an Enduring People
For the past few years, both in France and Germany, I was awed by the valiant struggle of people who, though only recently liberated from indescribable cruelty, exhibited extraordinary powers of…
List of Interview Questions Pertaining to Jews
Do you think there is a Jewish problem? If yes, in what sense? Do you care about it?
Have you had any experience with Jews? What kind? Do you remember names of persons involved and other specific data…
The Frankfort Lehrhaus
In the treatise Zeit ist’s [Franz] Rosenzweig outlined a detailed and imposing plan of an Academy for the Science of Judaism, the members of which would be both scholars and teachers. As scholars…
The Blessing of Assimilation in Jewish History
I trust that none of my remarks will be understood to say that assimilation is not now, or has not always been, a great threat to the Jewish group. In a sense, the problem of assimilation is as old as…
There We Sat Down: Talmudic Judaism in the Making
Like other “holy men,” the rabbi played political, religious, and cultural roles. Just as the Zoroastrian Magus was involved in the administration of the local community, in the maintenance of cultic…
The Naked God: The Writer and the Communist Party
I asked about a certain Russian poet. All good writers are poets to one extent or another, but that is a way of saying something. It is something else and clearer, to say that the poet is a very…
Old Stock
Hester sat down quietly next to her mother, whose sewing went on and on, a mild substitute for conversation. For a while, Hester watched the long, important-looking shadows that encroached upon the…
Nicodemus
I went under cover of night
By back streets and alleyways,
Not as one secret and ashamed
But with a natural discretion.
I passed by a boy and a girl
Embraced against the white wall
In parts of…
Diving into the Wreck
First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am…
A Union Soldier’s Passover
Passover preparations for a Civil War–era Union soldier included importing seven barrels of matzot and collecting weeds to substitute for the symbolic bitterness of horseradish.