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.
And Cain Spoke unto Abel His Brother
(Genesis 4:8)
for D. G., my uncle
Abel, brother, yesterday the primal crime awoke me:
I had murdered your snow-white dreams and damned I was urging myself
endlessly on down the night-darkening…
Almanac for the Year 5675
The Molad is Wednesday evening, 10 minutes and 9 halakim on 6 [6:10.9 pm]
Iyar 5675—April 1915—Taurus—(29 days)
[Hebrew Date]
[Day of the week]
[Christian Date]
[Islamic Date]
1st
Thursday
Se…
Three Donkeys
Three donkeys from Beersheba, so they say,
Plodded slowly down the road to Dan one day.
One brown, one black, one white, they went their way.
The three passed by a minaret, and there
The black one…
Letters from the Ghettos
The two hundred and fifty letters presented here require no preliminaries or commentary. No human language is adequate to the task. Even the account of our people’s history, drenched as…
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…
War Journals: Diary of a Jewish Chaplain from Eretz-Israel in the British Army
Today I returned from my trip to Tunis, and I will start to record what I witnessed, heard, and felt. On Thursday, 15 Iyyar (May 20, 1943), I left Tripoli. [ . . . ]
On that day…
Blessed Is the Match
Blessed is the match, consumed in kindling flame.
Blessed is the flame that burns in the heart’s secret places.
Blessed is the heart that knows, for honors sake, to stop its beating.
Blessed is the…
Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel
Eretz-Israel [The Land of Israel] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural…
On Literature and the State
Our state is young, with a girl’s years, just fourteen. Still without her shoes, as the poet says. But she seems old, many generations old. In these few years, old age has pounced on her. No one is…
Friends Talking about Jimmy
Jimmy’s body was taken to Har Tuv, where the doctor confirmed his death, and from Har Tuv it was taken to the morgue in the hospital in the convent of Abu Gosh. He lay there, covered with a gray…
A Common Grave
To the sacred memory of dear Shmulik and his comrades who fell in the battle to liberate Yeḥi‘amHe rose from the bed shading his eyes with his hands as if it was light although it was still dark. His…
The Brigade
I was sitting next to Brodsky, and Sonnenshein was sitting opposite us, near the back of the truck. From the moment we had crossed into Germany, something had happened to him. His pipe never left his…