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 Folk Songs
At the beginning of the present century a whole constellation of Jewish composers and musicians studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory under the beneficial influence of Rimski…
Post-War Years 1945–1954
The months of which I am about to write are probably amongst the most painful in my whole life; I interrupted my work on the book for a long time trying to summon up the courage to embark on this…
Their Canada and Mine
My grandfather, like so many others, came to Canada by steerage from Poland in 1900 and settled down not far from Main Street in what was to become a ghetto. Here, as in the real America, the…
Toward an “Order of B’nai Or”: A Program for a Jewish Liturgical Brotherhood
We are basically dissatisfied with “the world.” Our dissatisfaction stems mainly from the fact that as well-adjusted members of it we would have to live as ardent consumers…
Meditation
After Jehudah Halevi
How long will you remain a boy?
Dawns must end.
Behold the angels of old age.
Shake off temporal things then
the way a bird shakes off the night dew.
Dart like a swallow
from…
Diary
In the month of Tevet of the same year I entered that school and began studying Greek with tremendous dedication. I repented of all my previous actions and habits, just as I had promised my father (of…
Bi’ur ha-Gra: Glosses to Shulḥan arukh
6. “It is proper,” etc. The phraseology employed by the Tur is “And one should cover one’s head so that one should not be in a state of bareheadedness”—this is taken from the words of the Ba‘al ha-…
Toward a History of the Education of Russian Jews
In our first series of discussions, we explored the struggle between the government and the Jews, which was initiated by the former and ended with its triumph over the latter; in the second…
Moreh nevukhe ha-zeman (Guide for the Perplexed of Our Time)
According to the workings of the natural order there are three periods through which each primordial nation passes from the time it comes into being until it passes from the scene and perishes:
- The…
Rome and Jerusalem
What we have to do at present for the regeneration of the Jewish nation is, first, to keep alive the hope of the political rebirth of our people, and next, to reawaken that hope where it slumbers…
Portrait of Jacob Ries
Jacob Ries (1660–1751) of Prague first worked as a badchan (jester) for weddings. In 1710, he became court jester in Vienna under Charles VI. The artist of this portrait of Ries is not known. It…
Wedding Ceremony
Johann Christoph Georg Bodenschatz’s Kirchliche Verfassung der heutigen Juden, sonderlich derer in Deutschland (Religious Constitution of Today’s Jews, Especially Those in Germany), published in…