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 Culture Stillborn
It is possible to see the promise of a beginning of Levantine literature—rooted in the realities of the Middle East and influenced by European culture—in Le livre de Goha le Simple [Goha the Fool] by…
Life as a Parable
While my body, in its restlessness, yearned for distances but always inevitably returned to its point of departure, my soul, lacking repose, yearned to travel far into the mighty distances of the…
Mr. Israel Shefi’s Night of Independence
[While the song from the radio can still be heard, Israel sits motionless, in such a way that it is hard to tell whether he is checking a test, thinking, or is just sunk in his place. Later, suddenly…
Isaac
Early in the morning the sun took a walk in the woods
with me and my father
my right hand in his left.
A knife flashed between the trees like lightning.
And I’m so scared of the fear in my eyes…
The Cobbler’s Song
Shlomo reclines within his shrine
Woe to my days, woe to my nights
Everyone knows how he is
Nobody knows about me
Woe to my days, woe to my nights
As if it means something to anybody.
If I have a…
Transfiguration
In history class
I draw a Latin-American moustache
On Titus Aspasianus;
Miriam, who under her flannel shirt
Is beginning to show development,
Is making vulgar contours
Onto the sculpture of his bust…
Nostalgia
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget itself.Give us the land we have wandered in timeThrough foreign parts, far, so far and then,Every year at Passover we repeat the lineNext year…
Account of His Visit to Lublin
I was privileged to visit Lublin with my late father when I was a boy of nine, and I saw his [the Seer’s] face illuminated like torches. And when he opened the door to recite Ke-gavnah [An Aramaic…
Correspondence with Moses Montefiore
To Sir Moses Montefiore, from Oro, the widow of Hayim Arieh, 1866
[Oh] one who gives light to the earth and to them that dwell thereon, who is…
Sermon of Ethical Rebuke Preached . . . during the Penitential Period Preceding the New Year’s Day, 5505 [1744], to the Congregation of Metz
The prophet Hosea cried out: Come, let us turn back to the Lord; He attacked, and He can heal us; He wounded, and He can bind us up. In two days He will make us whole again; on the third day He will…
Sefer ḥeshbon ha-nefesh (Book of Moral Accounting)
[ . . . ] 2. When you stroll along the riverbank, you find an entire plain filled with reeds and bulrushes, all of which are standing erect, one adjacent to the other, and none of them…
Israel and Humanity
Judaism’s approach to history is shaped by the fact that unlike other religions, it locates perfection not at the beginning but at the end of history. This, surely, is the…