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.
Sheltered by a Crimson Awning . . .
Sheltered by a crimson awning,
All alone, his slaves dismissed,
A lord is bidding farewell fondly
To a black-browed odalisque.
“Sarah, houri of the prophet,
My sunshine, comfort, strength, delight…
Eleh divre ha-berit (These Are the Words of the Covenant)
These are the words of the covenant as a statute for Jacob, as an everlasting covenant for Israel; the Almighty spoke but once—and He will never alter His law—through the Torah and the ruling which…
Feast in Paradise, No. 2
In the early 1980s, Eshel-Gershuni began making what she called “fetishes” or “impossible jewelry,” transferring her skills as a jewelry-maker to sculpture. She combined expensive materials like gold…
A Time to Plant, a Time to Cast Away Stones
Rabinovitz’s sculptures are characterized by the use of minimal elements that are granted symbolic meaning through the text or title that accompanies them, commonly taken from the Bible or other…
Gevurot ha-shem (Mighty Acts of the Lord): On Passover
And we may remove the [Seder] table, so that the young child should express wonder at why we are removing the table; for surely it would be appropriate to eat now that we are already leaning…
I was sleeping, but my heart was awake
Hark! My beloved! Here he comes,
Thousands, myriads at his side,
And over me, his banner of love!
I was sleeping, but my heart
was awake within me.
I could hear but…
Protector of Women
Please listen to my words,
Wise, honest, and beautiful women
For my riddle is complete:
Against your faithful crew [of women]
Old men
Raise your shame to the stars
While I protect you,
Defend you…
The Plea
O living and terrible God, replace my prison, this round pit, by a full moon and a goblet. Pray, turn the darkness of my hell into a shining light, and this dwelling-place of dusk into an orchard, a…
All Those Who Love You
I left his house
Of my own volition.
In order to build him a house
Of my own volition.
But it seems my father
Remained solitary
And neglected
Not of his own volition.
I was moving towards my…
The Dancing
In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture
and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots
I have never seen a post-war Philco
with the automatic eye
nor heard Ravel’s “Bolero”…
Russia, Russia Fragments
Oh, Father of great mercy
In sunset’s flame there fades
My cradle land
That was once nearer to me than my salt-crusted shirt
Where with my brother Russian
I shared more than once
A measly bite of…
Bewildering Clarity of Tongues
for Aaron Lebedeff (1873–1960), performer on the Yiddish stage
Bewildering clarity of tongues:
names you never heard, food
you never ate, a wild dance
you never learned, light hanging
in the sky…