Showing Results 1 - 10 of 13
In the year 5289 (1528/29), the holy martyrs of Pösing, 36 souls—men and women, youths and young girls—were arrested because of a false accusation made by a mamzer, and they died for the…
In those days, but especially since the year 1740, when Frederick the Great ascended the throne, various social circles in Berlin began zealously to acquire intellectual knowledge. Even among…
One afternoon a friend from class asked me a religious question. After I answered her, she remarked that it was curious that our teacher had not been able to answer the same question. “Don’t be so…
Now whatever else may be involved in a nondeliberate change of accent, one thing is clear: it bespeaks a very high degree of detachment from the ethos of one’s immediate surroundings. It is…
I was sitting next to Brodsky, and Sonnenshein was sitting opposite us, near the back of the truck. From the moment we had crossed into Germany, something had happened to him. His pipe never left his…
Without warning, on the 20th of April, 1749, at the end of the Passover Festival, Sunday, at about 17 hours [noon], I was kidnapped and taken away by force thanks to a false denunciation made against…
I, David, son of King Solomon of blessed memory, from the Khibur Desert, arrived at the gate of the State of Rome on the fifteenth day of the month of First Adar in the year 5584 [1524]. A…
A scion from Portugal by the name of Solomon Molkho sprouted forth from the trunk of Israel [see Isaiah 11:1] and spent his youth among the scribes of the king—where they had been scattered since the…
Stanislaw often told me how much he liked my company, and sometimes he wondered about my Jewishness: “Look at yourself! You cannot be Jewish!” he would exclaim. And yet whenever he spoke to me about…
There are contradictions and ambivalences in our celebrating Thanksgiving. We are recent Americans. It wasn’t the Mayflower that brought our people over here. We know too much about what the coming of…