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.
Out of Egypt
Egyptian Jewish American author André Aciman describes celebrating his last Seder in Egypt with his bags packed to leave his homeland for good.
Building the Tabernacle
When Moses had ascended the mountain, the cloud covered the mountain. The Presence of the Lord abode on Mount Sinai, and the cloud hid it for six days. On the seventh day He called to…
Satan in Goray
It was Rabbi Benish’s practice to say his afternoon and evening prayers by himself in his study. When the news reached his ears he hurried to the prayer house. But it…
Sefer luḥot edut (Tablets of Testimony)
For it is not against me that these men have sinned, for what am I and what is my life? My days have passed like a transient shadow, and fly away as does a dream—like a dream upon…
The Pharisees: The Sociological Background of Their Faith
The fiercest of all the conflicts between Pharisee and Sadducee concerned the doctrine of the resurrection, for in it the class conflict was most…
Response to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting. The old Inquisition had its rack and…
The Bible View of Slavery
A Civil War–era Jewish leader defends the institution of slavery in the South based on his reading of the Hebrew Bible.
Miriam’s Song
What if Miriam were remembered just as a person rescuing her brother Moses rather than as the heroine responsible for saving the man who would redeem the Jewish people from bondage?
Bronx Primitive: Portraits in a Childhood
This excerpt from Kate Simon’s Bronx Primitive: Portraits in Childhood explores the controversial and secretive decision many immigrant women made to get an abortions, and the means of obtaining one.
Oppression and Exodus
From movies to civil-rights movements, the Exodus stands at the center of Western thought and culture. You will still be surprised by what is, and what isn’t, in the account.
The Shohet (from “Had Gadya”)
The violence of the Passover song “Had Gadya” (“Who Knows One”) clearly spoke to this illustrator’s sense of horror following World War I.