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.
If I Forget Thee (Tsiyon tamati)
Zion my innocent one, Zion my desired,
To thee my soul yearns from far away;
May I forget my right hand should I forget thee, my beauty,
Until my grave is sealed upon me . . .
May my tongue cleave…
Rally in Memory of Fallen Worker Kagan
Members of the Bund (General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia), Po‘ale Tsiyon, the Socialist-Zionist party, and Jewish trade unions, along with representatives of the Russian…
The Past and the Future of Yiddish Theater
The Jewish intelligentsia, the Jewish art patrons showed no sign of attention to Yiddish theater. A sickly weakling, it was born in southern Russia forty years ago, and has remained anemic and weak to…
The Day after the Pogrom (Yard in Ruins and Bereaved Family)
The Day after the Pogrom was painted shortly after the Kishinev pogrom, in which forty-nine Jews were murdered, more than 500 injured, many Jewish women raped, 700 houses ransacked and destroyed, 600…
Legends of the Jews
The wife of Potiphar would frequently speak to her husband in praise of Joseph’s chastity in order that he might conceive no suspicion of the…
The Coveted City: Salonika
The city modernizes more and more. One hardly sees those baggy, dark, unsightly breeches of old, the ones that Muslims, Christians, and poor Jews still wore in the middle of the last century. Until…
Above Eternal Peace
Above Eternal Peace is Isaak Levitan’s most famous painting, a revered example of the “mood landscapes” popular in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century. The artist painted the view from a cliff…
The Revolutionary Land of Russia
Dos revolutsyonere Rusland (Revolutionary Russia) was a Yiddish-language publication issued in 1905, during the Russian Revolution. Published in New York by the Jewish Socialist Federation, the…
A Salonikan Jewish Man Recalls the Day of His Wedding
When my engagement was decided, my sister and brother-in-law announced, “You are engaged” without my even meeting the father of the bride.
As the date of my wedding approached, I still didn’t have the…
Of Bygone Days (Shloyme Reb Khayims)
Mendele the bookpeddler says: Whenever a Jew comes to a journey’s end, he feels as if his hips are breaking, his back aching, and his knees shaking from being crushed and squeezed…
A History of the Jews of Turkey and the Orient
1.
In the year 5121 (1361 CE), Sultan Murad I conquered the great city of Adrianople—called Edirne by the Turks and Endirne by the Jews…
Our Political Tasks
Neglect of the Tasks of Autonomous Activity of the Proletariat: The Heritage of the Iskra Period
Many, far too many comrades remain deaf and blind to the questions we have just raised. This deafness…