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.
Sermon: On the Secularization and Degradation of Iraqi Jewry
[ . . . ] But before we come to analyze the dreadful calamity [i.e., the drought] that has befallen us, and before we come to see what is the putrid humor harbored in our midst…
Upon Your Nakedness a White Day Celebrates
Upon your nakedness a white day celebrates,
You who are [so] poor and so rich,
A wall of mountains has frozen,
Transparent like a deceptive vision,
Attached to the horizon.
Noon. The vastnesses of…
Abischag
King David was old, advanced in years. Though covered in bedclothes, he could not get warm. They searched the land of Israel for a beautiful young woman and found Abischag the Shunammite, who was…
To the Common Man
When they begin to plaster the walls
With freshly printed proclamations,
When black print sounds alarm
Calling “To the People” and “To Soldiers”
And ruffians and adolescents
Are taken in by their…
Zangwill
Someone gathered rich apples, rich corn,
Grown of your heart and your brain,
And in me, as a loft, has stored
Some of the fruit and grain.
The loft smells sweet with its store:
The corn for making…
Salute
There are things in this country too—
And if they find no streetlamp pole,
There will be a tree—and that means clearly
That a Negro over twenty years old
May hate all things which spire
To hold a man…
Self-Hatred among Jews
That self-hatred is present among Jews is a fact that the non-Jew would hardly believe, but which is well known among the Jews themselves. It is a phenomenon which has been observed ever since the…
The Situation of the Jewish Writer
All discussions pertaining to the Jews must begin with some very gloomy observations. The Jews are, everywhere, a minority group, and it is a particular misfortune these days to be a minority group in…
Hagar
Hanging her corals on the night she leaves
silent, possessing nothing.
A moon dives, a splash extinguished
in a wall of water.
Alone, just herself, the path
blown clean with white godhead
twists…
I Have Never Been Here Before
I always thought
I had been here before.
Each year of my patched-up life
I mended the fabrics
of my decrepit, tattered world.
In memory I recognized faces and smiles,
even my father and mother…
The Love of Teresa de Meun
I do not want to see you in my dreams
each night. I do not want to tremble when I hear
a footstep at my door. I do not want
to think of you each hour of every day.
I do not want to see
in the…
Daddy and Mommy Went to the Movies, Ilana Stays Alone in the Armchair Looking at a Gray Book
She turns the pages, naked uncles
so naked and skinny, run and
even aunties with fannies showing
and others in pajamas as in a show
with yellow cloth stars sewed on.
And everybody so ugly and thin,
a…