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.
The Lead Soldiers
Formations of soldiers faced each other across the floor, taking cover in domino houses and bunkers of colored blocks. Yurik and Kazik lay by their soldiers. [ . . . ]
But Kazik had stopped playing…
My Michael
Michael and I arranged to meet that same evening in Cafe Atara in Ben Yehuda Street. Outside an absolute storm was raging, beating down furiously on the stone walls of Jerusalem.
Austerity regulations…
The Love of Teresa de Meun
I do not want to see you in my dreams
each night. I do not want to tremble when I hear
a footstep at my door. I do not want
to think of you each hour of every day.
I do not want to see
in the…
An Old Song
Where pain weeps, it is the Jew who weeps.
Where a bullet is fired, it is the Jew who falls.
—Why is the dog barking near the fence?
—Someone threw a rock at him, at the Jew’s dog.
We…
Daddy and Mommy Went to the Movies, Ilana Stays Alone in the Armchair Looking at a Gray Book
She turns the pages, naked uncles
so naked and skinny, run and
even aunties with fannies showing
and others in pajamas as in a show
with yellow cloth stars sewed on.
And everybody so ugly and thin,
a…
Todesfuge (1944–45)
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening
we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we shovel a grave in the air there you won’t lie too cramped
A man lives in…
Sefer kise Shelomoh (Solomon’s Throne)
When our teacher Rabbi Solomon, who was a rabbi here in Aleppo, passed away without any male children, the rabbis [of the city] consulted among themselves, and with the elders of the people and the…
Sihah be-erets ha-hayim (A Conversation in the Afterlife)
A dialogue in the land of the living between our teacher, R. Moses Maimonides, the Spaniard, and our Teacher Moses, son of Menaḥem [Mendelssohn] of Dessau, and an anonymous third person.On the day of…
The Three Brothers
“Back at home, I pulled myself together and reflected on what had happened. Given how the people had behaved when they heard the wrongheaded and hateful rabbi’s curse of excommunication, I realized…
Shire tiferet (Songs of Glory)
How could the wise of heart envisage the final outcome of the matter,
Seeing that, when he was just a quarter of a year old, they placed him in the bulrushes?
None has arisen like him amongst the…
Toldot Ya‘akov Yosef (The Offshoots of Jacob Joseph)
I heard from the venerable rabbinic scholar, R. Nahman, an interpretation of the words of [the Besht] that one should intend in every word that he utters submissiveness…
Nineteen Letters on Judaism
You ask me for my opinion on the question which at present agitates so greatly the minds of men, emancipation; whether I consider it feasible and desirable, according to the spirit of Judaism, our…