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 Martyrdom of a Mother and Her Seven Sons
It happened also that seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and thongs, to partake of unlawful swine’s flesh. One of them…
Labor Is Honorable
When R. Judah would go to the study hall he would carry a pitcher on his shoulder [to sit on], saying, “Labor is great, as it brings honor to the laborer [who performs] it.” [Similarly…
Rising from Merchant Status
And Moses was a hundred and twenty years old [when he died] (Deuteronomy 34:7).
He was one of four who died at the age of one hundred and twenty, and these were Moses, Hillel the Elder, Rabban Yoḥanan…
Physical Requirements of Pilgrimage
All are obligated to appear [at the Temple] except a deaf person, an imbecile, a minor, a person of unknown sex, a hermaphrodite, women, unfreed slaves, a lame person, a blind person, a sick person…
Simeon bar Kosiba’s Order for the Four Species
Shimeon to Yehudah bar Menashe to Qiryath ‘Arab(v)aya I have sent you two donkeys that you shall send with them two men to Yehonathan bar Be‘ayan and to Masabala in order that they shall pack and send…
Neglect of Circumcision
I am now telling you that the Israelites will prove false to this ordinance. They will not circumcise their sons in accord with this entire law because they will leave some of the flesh of their…
Grounds for the Ordeal
How does he warn her? If he says to her in front of two [witnesses], “Do not speak with that man” and she spoke with him, she is still permitted to her husband and permitted to eat terumah. If she…
The Soul’s Holding Pattern
Then I went to another place, and he showed me on the west side a great and high mountain of hard rock and inside it four beautiful corners; it had [in it] a deep, wide, and smooth (thing) which was…
Jesus as Messiah
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we…
Righteous Souls under God’s Throne of Glory
It was taught [in a baraita]: R. Eliezer says: The souls of the righteous are stored beneath the throne of glory, as it is said: And the soul of my master shall be bound in the bundle of life (1…
Precautions after Bloodletting
Aramaic
Rav and Samuel both say: One who did this thing [bloodletting] should tarry a while and afterward get up. As a master said: [Hebrew] In five matters, one is nearer to death than to life. And…
Illness
Aramaic
R. Yoḥanan suffered from [the illness] tsafdina’ [or, tsifduna’; perhaps inflammation of the mouth or gums]. He went to a certain matronita [a non-Jewish woman]. She prepared [a remedy for him…