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.
Mourning for Jerusalem
Tosefta Sotah 15 guides Jews after 70 CE to mourn Jerusalem’s loss with moderation—preserving faith, life, and tradition beyond the Temple.
Prohibition on Building a Synagogue as a Model of the Temple
As it is taught [in a baraita]: A person [may] not construct a house [in the exact] form of the Sanctuary, [nor] a portico in [the exact] form of the Entrance Hall [of the Sanctuary, nor] a courtyard…
Qumran Lament for Jerusalem
[ . . . ] . . . [ . . . ] [ . . . ] . . . all our sins. And it is not in the…
Prayer of Confession
When Israel was taken into exile to a foreign country,
when they neglected the Lord, who had redeemed them,
they were expelled…
A Poetic Prayer Memorializing the Sabbath Sacrifice
You instituted the Sabbath, You favored its offerings,
You commanded its specific laws
along with the order of its libations.…
Paul’s Ethical Teachings
Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is well for a man not to touch a woman.” But because of cases of sexual immorality…
The Martyrdom of a Mother and Her Seven Sons
It happened also that seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and thongs, to partake of unlawful swine’s flesh. One of them…
Labor Is Honorable
When R. Judah would go to the study hall he would carry a pitcher on his shoulder [to sit on], saying, “Labor is great, as it brings honor to the laborer [who…
Rising from Merchant Status
And Moses was a hundred and twenty years old [when he died] (Deuteronomy 34:7).
He was one of four who died at the age of one hundred and twenty, and these were Moses, Hillel the…
Simeon bar Kosiba’s Order for the Four Species
Shimeon to Yehudah bar Menashe to Qiryath ‘Arab(v)aya I have sent you two donkeys that you shall send with them two men to Yehonathan bar Be‘ayan and to Masabala in order that they shall pack and send…
Neglect of Circumcision
I am now telling you that the Israelites will prove false to this ordinance. They will not circumcise their sons in accord with this entire law because they will leave some of the flesh of their…
The Soul’s Holding Pattern
Then I went to another place, and he showed me on the west side a great and high mountain of hard rock and inside it four beautiful corners; it had [in it] a deep, wide, and smooth (thing) which was…