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.
To Be Said at the Seder
Over and over, when the wayside dust had grayed us,
And we came and knocked at another’s door,
He threatened us with his fist and gainsaid us:
This is not your place! Move on!
Over and over.
Over…
A Child
I have a friend, a teacher, with shaggy hair black as pitch.
He has a child (his wife is still a child too)
and when he comes home, difficult and gloomy,
she runs to meet him, like a quivering wave:…
Good Night, World
Good night, wide world.
Big, stinking world.
Not you, but I, slam the gate.
In my long robe,
With my flaming, yellow patch,
With my proud gait,
At my own command—
I return to the ghetto.
Wipe out…
The National Being and the Jewish Community
[ . . . ] If against the assimilationist the American spirit affirms the right to be different, against the segregationist it affirms the right of free association of the different with one another…
The Spiritual Upheaval in Israel in the Wake of the Holocaust
When we consider the quotidian life of our society, it is impossible to ignore the phenomenon of “avoidance”; namely, it seems that the public at large is unwilling to think too much about the…
The God of Israel
The God of Israel is not rich.
I saw the Sistine Chapel,
Notre-Dame, the Cathedral of Cologne—
You can feast your eyes on them, you can enjoy.
The God of Israel is stingy.
He won’t fill his museum…
Jews and Arabs in Morocco
Among the Jews of Europe, acute feelings of difference always fade with the passage of time. The school, the army, and politics have a unifying force; integration comes about through cultural channels…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…