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 Voice
Over and over, yes, over and over,
I shook the pinions of my anger,
Again and again you broke faith with me,
And I stormed at your crop of iniquity.
But over and over, and over and over,
Your songs…
A Stubborn Back—and Nothing More
Come, let us hide ourselves in caves,
in stony crevices, in graves
where stretched full length on the hard ground
we lie, backs up and faces down.
We shall not record, we shall not say
why we’ve…
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…
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…
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…
Is the Printing Press Harmful? A Rabbi from Sarajevo Responds
How great is the benefit of the printing houses, for thanks to the power of the printing press, the Torah is enhanced everywhere in the world. The rabbis are certainly making the effort to produce…
If thrones have been seated in heaven: For Rosh Hashanah
This poem expresses the idea that since today is the day when seats are set up [for judgment], since the Jewish people has declared the New Month, therefore we need to run to God and prostrate…