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.
A Bag of Lies
Our associates claim—and in moments of weakness we tend to agree—that this compilation has no need for introduction because the subjects speak for themselves. In addition, we cannot…
Painting and Sculpture in Israel
It is not enough to see a statue. A statue has to be sensed with the fingertips. In our imagination we touch the statue, caress it, examine its rounded and hollow surfaces, and by doing so our sense…
Under This Blazing Light
So what do storytellers do? The ones I like operate more or less like tribal witchdoctors.
Here is a little story for you. Nine thousand six hundred and six years ago, in a…
A Letter from Mama Camouna
Not long after Sammy’s visit, my father died after a long illness. My mother’s sorrow and mine were compounded by the fact that there were not ten men who had known him in his life to stand by his…
Yaʻakobi & Leidental
[Leidental’s room. Evening. Leidental. One of his fingers is bandaged.]Leidental:[To himself.] At eight fifteen I felt I cannot any more with myself. I had: regulation misery, pain to top…
A Fire Is Kindled within Me
A fire [of joy] is kindled within me, when I recall [the spiritual climate] when I was in Yemen,
[But] my soul [descended to] abysmal depths and was immensely astounded when I came to Zion.
The Jews…
One Moment
One moment of silence, please. If you please. I
would like to say something. He walked
right past me. I could have touched the hem
of his mantle. I did not touch it. Who could have
known what I did…
Shir Leshalom (A Song for Peace)
Let the sun come up today,
Let the morning shine,
All the prayers and plaintive words,
Won’t bring us back to life.
For we whose light is darkened now,
Are covered by the dust,
The bitter tears…
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…