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.
Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered
[…] I want to tell you about my brother’s ghost.
I had so looked forward to seeing him again: my Schorschi, my Czech brother, who had sent us a few postcards from Theresienstadt. But he wasn’t there…
The Author of Himself
The Jews in the Warsaw ghetto were tormented; they experienced terrible things. But from time to time they also experienced fine and wonderful things. They suffered. But they also loved. Except that…
A Seated Man
In these fragments of a mural from Kuntillet Ajrud, only partially preserved, a seated male figure appears to be wearing a wide-collared yellow garment. A long sidelock is visible in front of his ear…
California Kosher: Contemporary and Traditional Jewish Cuisine
California Kosher reflects a merging of cuisines from everywhere in the world that Jews have lived, combined with the dazzling variety of fresh foods available in California—while still observing the…
Abecedaries from Kuntillet Ajrud
An abecedary is a list of the letters of the alphabet, written in order, for instruction or practice in writing, and perhaps also for other purposes. Four abecedaries were written on this large…
To Mend the World
What is a Jew? Who is a Jew? After this catastrophe, what is a Jew’s relation to the Jewish past? We resume our original question as we turn from one rupture in post-Holocaust Jewish existence—of the…
New Jerusalem Old Athens: The Holy Middle
This rediscovery of Judaism at the end of the end of philosophy, at the tertium quid, the middle of ethics, occurs at the deepest difficulty of both philosophy and Judaism, where they are equally cast…
Voices of the Matriarchs
What does it mean to study women’s religion? How are we to define our subject matter? How are we to understand the relationship of the history of women’s religious life and practice to the history of…
Hot Tea and Sponge Cake at 10:00 P.M.
My mother and father were an embarrassment to me, up until high school. They were much older than my friends’ parents (my dad was forty- seven and my mother was forty- four when I was born), and they…
On Courage and Resistance
Let’s start with risk. The risk of being punished. The risk of being isolated. The risk of being injured or killed. The risk of being scorned. We are all conscripts in one sense or another. For all of…
Reform Judaism: A Centenary Perspective
The Central Conference of American Rabbis has on special occasions described the spiritual state of Reform Judaism. The centenaries of the founding of the Union of American Hebrew…
Will There Be One Jewish People by the Year 2000?
Today, there again exists a serious threat that the differences within the world-wide Jewish community may end in schism.
The foremost reason for the gravity of the situation is the explosion in Jews…