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.
Jewish Wedding in Bombay
Her mother shed a tear or two but wasn’t really
crying. It was the thing to do, so she did it
enjoying every moment. The bride laughed when I
sympathized, and said don’t be silly.
Her brothers had…
The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language
The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language has been assembled on the basis of inclusiveness—that is to say, as a dictionary which attempts to record and include all the words of the Yiddish language…
Wordsworth and the Rabbis
What I am trying to suggest is that, different as the immediately present objects were in each case, Torah for the Rabbis, Nature for Wordsworth, there existed for the Rabbis and for Wordsworth a…
The Jews in Polish Culture
In every caste system the lower caste occupies a marginal position vis-à-vis the upper caste. The Jews were a marginal element to the Polish nobility. The margin was not isolated, for the Jews could…
The Jews of Silence: A Personal Report on Soviet Jewry
In your first confrontation with the Jews of Russia you are forced to abandon whatever intellectual baggage you may have brought with you. Logic, you suddenly realize, will not help you here. You have…
Photography
Photographs shock us in so far as they show us something novel. Unfortunately, the ante keeps getting raised—partly through the very proliferation of such images of horror. One’s first encounter with…
From the Old Marketplace
Benjamin came back with the same suitcase and the same few sets of underwear he had left with for Germany. He brought back everything—his illness included. The only thing he didn’t bring back were his…
Kaddish: Hymmnn
O mother
what have I left out
O mother
what have I forgotten
O mother
farewell
with a long black shoe
farewell
with Communist Party and a broken stocking
farewell
with six dark hairs on the wen of…
To Be of Use
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek…
Description of His Career as a Revolutionary Soldier, 1777–1783
Georgia
City of Savannah
Sheftall Sheftall of the said city, being duly sworn, saith:
That some time in the latter part of the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy seven, or the beginning of…
My Oriental Diary
I did not sleep; I let myself be rocked by the inexorable battle of the waves; soon the monster of seasickness flashed in my innards, but I overcame it. A god held sway in me; he triumphed: it was the…
Lament of the Daughter of Judah
O God of Hosts, our God from of old,
Was it for this that You selected our ancestors from days of yore
That You took their descendants as an inheritance for Yourself
To set them up as the target of…