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.
Lithuania
…I remember a woman
who sat on the pot where the apples cooked in the cold
basement, her face black from smoke. And here, near this brick
building with a red tile roof, is one of our family, Mausha
V…
Ivory Relief of a Woman at a Window
Ivory relief of a woman at a window, Arslan Tash, Syria, ninth–eighth century BCE.
Dancing Musician
On this clay plaque from Dan, from the Late Bronze (Canaanite) period, a man is playing a lute while dancing. The position of the performer’s legs shows that he is doing a lively dance.
Seal with Four-winged Uraeus
This seal, found at the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem, shows a uraeus or upright cobra with four wings. Modeled on the black-necked cobra that applies its venom both by biting and spitting, it was…
1948
The living room is deserted, dark and quiet. Knocking is heard. Rina comes out of her room carrying an oil lamp to see where the sounds are coming from. She walks around the living room in a…
To Mend the World
What is a Jew? Who is a Jew? After this catastrophe, what is a Jew’s relation to the Jewish past? We resume our original question as we turn from one rupture in post-Holocaust Jewish existence—of 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…
About Jerusalem and Its Leaders
Thus said my Lord God of Hosts: Go in to see that steward, that Shebna, in charge of the palace:
What have you here, and whom have you here,
That you have hewn out a tomb for yourself here?—
O…
Israel’s Rejection of God and Worship of False Gods
The word of the Lord came to me, saying, Go proclaim to Jerusalem: Thus said the Lord:
I accounted to your favor
The devotion of your youth,
Your love as a bride—
How you followed Me in…
On Courage and Resistance
Let’s start with risk. The risk of being punished. The risk of being isolated. The risk of being injured or killed. The risk of being scorned. We are all conscripts in one sense or another. For all of…
On Individual Righteousness
The word of the Lord came to me: O mortal, if a land were to sin against Me and commit a trespass, and I stretched out My hand against it and broke its staff of bread, and sent famine against it…
Will There Be One Jewish People by the Year 2000?
Today, there again exists a serious threat that the differences within the world-wide Jewish community may end in schism.
The foremost reason for the gravity of the situation is the explosion in Jews…