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.
Her bitter soul is anguished: For Tishah be-Av
Her bitter soul is anguished, because of her ailing wound.
The city one teeming with people is desolate, the Holy City that she had inherited.
For the glorious, sweet land, tears descend like a…
Compendium of Practical Kabbalah
This remarkable manuscript of practical kabbalah was written in Eastern Europe in the mid-eighteenth century; at the end of that century it was owned by the Radvil Hasidic dynasty. In contrast to…
Midbar Yehudah (The Wilderness of Judah)
We must consider these three things: what great good we had in the past, the great distress and iniquity which we are in today, and…
Colophon: Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah
The great work called Mishneh Torah by the rabbi, our master, Moses ben Maimon of blessed memory, comprises fourteen books.
Were it not that the Lord was with us (Psalms 124:1), the Torah might have…
Shir ha-ma‘alot le-David (A Song of Ascents, of David)
Seek ye out the book of the Lord (Isaiah 34:16), and read The Holy Epistle [so] called to water the flock, go and browse.
Perek be-shir (A Treatise on Poetry)
A compilation containing all the techniques of poetry simply put; covering all the principles, meters, rhymes, correct methods, and true rules; sifted and clarified; solid as a bronze mirror, such…
Beri‘ah ve-Zimrah (Briyo and Zimro)
Zimro, the son of Tovas [ . . . ] was very good-looking, highly intelligent, and a scholar. Now, the king loved him more than any other member of the royal household. He was the leading figure at…
Burning Holy Books
Holy books, said my friend, angry,
there’s no such thing. Books,
books: let them talk
to us about books.
It was a hot night.
At noon light rips
through the room, and everything’s clear:
over the…
The Song of the Humble
Music with a light Israeli/jazz groove starts playing. The percussions play along the scene in a question and answer routine as if they were the immigration officer Inquiehush meets…
Rebuilding Jerusalem
In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, wine was set before him; I took the wine and gave it to the king—I had never been out of sorts in his presence. The king…
Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy
[The text of this article is published without its accompanying notes.]If I were asked to characterize in a phrase the change that religious Jewry has undergone in the past generation, I would say…
How to Save American Jews
Over the past ten years, the American Jewish community has undergone a radical inner shift in mood, from buoyant optimism to deep anxiety about its future. […]
The present anxiety can be dated to the…