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.
Yiddish Folk Songs with Their Original Airs: Introduction
The songs that are found in the following collection are genuine folk songs: folk songs in the fullest sense of the word. These songs are now being published for the first time. After having wandered…
Colophon: Elye Bokher’s Petaḥ devaray
And thus was finished the book Petah DebaraiIn the name of the living God my redeemer and rockIn the year of the creation 306On the 29th day of TishriEdited by the Hebrew grammarianElijah the Levita…
Yiddish Folk Songs with Their Original Airs
III.
She: I can’t hide it anymore
I’ll reveal my bitter, heavy heart
I can’t even wait till tomorrow
Because oh does it smart!
He…
The Neila
The end of the day approaches.
The Book of Life and Death
is about to be closed,
and the hand of God will inscribe
the destiny of man.
It hesitates, trembles, stops.
A voice, sweet and frail,
an…
Higid Mordekhai (Mordechai Narrated)
This is the statement of the author, Mordechai Ha-kohen, son of My Lord, My Father Rabbi Yehudah, son of Marco (Mordechai), son of Abraham Israel Hakohen, born in Tripoli, Africa, on the twenty-fifth…
Chassidiana
Collection of writings, proclamations, and epistles related to the controversy between Hasidim and Misnagdim during the emergence of Hasidism (1772–1816)
The Future of the Jews: A Response to Werner Sombart
We want to scrape off the eggshells of the ghetto and live as children of the present in the midst of German intellectual life, but without breaking with our past and shaking off the legitimate…
The History of Jewish Education and Culture in France and Germany from the Expulsion of French Jewry to the Enlightenment
The behavior of the Jews in most places generally follows the behavior of the [local] Christians—(Sefer ḥasidim [Book of the Pious, 13th century] § 1106)
The present volume is a continuation…
On the Gathering of the Agadah
The written Hebrew agadah [lore and legends transmitted in rabbinic texts] is the primary literary form that was dominant for several centuries in the world of unbounded folk and individual creation…
Yiddish Proverbs and Idioms
Some of the proverbs I have collected appeared previously in the yearbook Der hoyz-fraynd published by M. Spektor in Warsaw (1888–1889). The collection I am now presenting to the reader as…
Emunas tsadikim (Faith of the Tsadikim)
It is a work that contains two hundred precious and wondrous stories, full of ethical [edification] and [inspiring] fear of the Lord, sweeter than honey, bringing joy to oppressed hearts and souls…