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.
Black Flakes
Snow has fallen, with no light. A month
has gone by now or two, since autumn in its monkish cowl
brought tidings my way, a leaf from Ukrainian slopes:
“Remember it’s wintry here too, for the…
Todesfuge (1944–45)
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening
we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we shovel a grave in the air there you won’t lie too cramped
A man lives in…
Jonen dalim (He That Has Mercy on the Poor)
Offstage, Edom and Jonen Dalim.Edom:Chase that filthy beggar away from my door!Jonen:God punishes those who despise the poor.Israel:Edom sees my tatters and feels disgust…
Orḥot ‘olam (Paths of the World)
On the existence and nature of a great and awesome, holy world, which is situated beyond the equator, and whether it is possible that there is a settlement south of this equator, called zo…
Colophon: Pentateuch with Rashi and Other Commentaries
From the day that God confused all the languages of the land [see Genesis 11:9], through the bitter and rapid exile of the expulsion from Spain, since then all good things have ended for us; our glory…
Autoemancipation
Among the living nations of the earth the Jews occupy the position of a nation long since dead. With the loss of their fatherland, the Jews lost their independence and fell into a state of decay…
Der pinkes (cover)
Der pinkes (The Book of Records, or The Annals) appropriated the term for the old-fashioned record book of a Jewish community or institution to name a very new phenomenon: the first “annual for the…
Voices of the Matriarchs
What does it mean to study women’s religion? How are we to define our subject matter? How are we to understand the relationship of the history of women’s religious life and practice to the history of…
Yiddish Lectures in Philadelphia
I want, at the request of the Arbeter Ring’s National Education Committee, to give a brief overview of the lectures we have arranged this season.
It is true that we haven’t had the opportunity to…
From Distant Lands
[ . . . ] Jewish immigration to South America has now been going on for fully twenty-five years, primarily to Argentina. This immigration began with such energy and…
Diary Entry: On Yiddish Theater
23 October. The actors convince me by their presence time and again, to my consternation, that most of what I’ve written about them so far is wrong. It is wrong because I wrote about them with…
Letter to Mendele
Dedication to My Dearly Beloved Grandfather, Reb Mendalle Mocher SephorimTo my dear grandfather, greetings!Stempenyu, my first long novel, which I inscribe to you, is yours; not only because I have…