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.
Herself
Apples. That’s what New Yorkers of the 1930s remember. Apples of the Hesperides, neatly stalled on corner after corner, sold on the last trembling line of decency by men who were unwilling to beg…
Elegy for the Soviet Yiddish Writers
I weep for you with all the letters of the alphabet
that made your hopeful songs. I saw how reason spent
itself in vain for hope, how you strove against regret—
and all the while your hearts were…
Last Will and Testament
Realizing that life is not in the hands of man but is governed by the only living God Almighty in whom I believe and adore, whose Divine Mosaic Law I, His slave, follow and venerate with all my heart…
The Childhood and Youth of a Man of the Enlightenment
I was born on 19 February 1758 in Nový Bydžov [in Bohemia] of well-to-do parents who destined me at birth to be a rabbi, a common practice among the Israelites then. For at that time, when all…
Ancestral Tales and Legends
Under the roof of the oldest synagogue in Prague (the Altneuschul), because of the belief that misfortune would meet the workers, there is preserved, in its primeval form and color, a piece of trunk…
The Tithe
[ . . . ] The sofer’s work is poorly compensated. There is an old proverb about how the soferim never grow wealthy in the land of Israel. I don’t know who gave birth to that pearl detached from the…
Seeker of Truth
He said: “Show me, I pray You, Your glory!”
Behold, wise men have declared,
Moreover, the proofs adduced by them have attested,
That the senses are illusory,
Mirages are legion,
Thoughts are…
Derushe ha-tselah (Sermons [of Landau])
One who exchanges good for bad and bad for good, and says that transgressions are really virtuous deeds, and that it is by this means that one can bring the Will of the Creator to fruition—such an…
Peri ha-arets (Fruit of the Earth)
Devekut requires that there be no impediment between man and God; only then is devekut possible. As in the parable of the Besht, it is impossible to join silver coins together…
The Jews in Our Time
They [the hasidim] study Kabbalah and Talmud diligently and successfully, and consequently they have among them excellent Talmud scholars. They also comprise three groups, each of them under one chief…
Shem ha-gedolim ha-shalem (Names of the Great Ones, Complete)
Although he himself would not recite “for the sake of the unification,” in keeping with the ruling of the Gaon—the Noda bi-Yehudah [R. Ezekiel Landau]—he was occasionally jealous of those who say it.…
A Sermon Delivered at the Great Synagogue of Smyrna on the Arrival of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore in that City after His Successful Mission on Behalf of His Persecuted Brethren in Damascus
Remember, I am with you: I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. —Genesis 28:15.
From the Midrash Shoḥer tov. “For the leader. Of the servant of the Lord, of David…