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.
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…
Woman Playing Frame Drum
The drumhead of this Phoenician-style terra-cotta figurine from Shikmona (south of Haifa) is recessed, suggesting that the drum had only a single head. Figurines like this are typically found in…
Integration and Survival
Jewish identity in the preemancipation period assumed essentially one of two forms—religion or communalism. Each in its own way was a break with tradition. Each was predicated on acceptance of the…
Scribes Writing Lists
Scribes writing lists, Nimrud, late eighth century BCE. Two Assyrian scribes, standing side by side, make lists of booty as it comes in. One writes on a clay tablet and the other writes on a scroll.
The State of the Jews, 1982: Reflections on Jewish Normality, Agony and Glory
For two hundred years, Jews have obsessively sought to achieve two goals—the collective normality of the Jewish people, and the ability to control their own destiny. Since 1782, these goals have been…
Jewish Studies as Oppositional? Or Gettin’ Mighty Lonely Out Here
The proliferation of multicultural courses—not only at the University of Delaware, but across the country—forms a central part of what has come to be termed the “new academy.” By both broadening the…
Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
Captain Wolfgang Hoffmann was a zealous executioner of Jews. As the commander of one of the three companies of Police Battalion 101, he and his fellow officers led their men, who were not SS men but…
Condemnation of Scoffers and Redemption of the Humble
Ha! Those who would hide their plans
Deep from the Lord!
Who do their work in dark places
And say, “Who sees us, who takes note of us?”
How perverse of you!
Should the potter be accounted as the…
Working for the Present: Essays on Contemporary Israeli Culture
Gentile is a category of difference. It is the point of departure, something self-evident. The Jew at prayer declares this daily: “Thou hast chosen us from all the…
Punishment by a Distant Nation
Lo, I am bringing against you, O House of Israel, A nation from afar
—declares the Lord;
It is an enduring nation,
It is an ancient nation;
A nation whose language you do not know—
You will not…
Condemning Neighboring Nations, Judah, and Israel
The words of Amos, a sheepbreeder from Tekoa, who prophesied concerning Israel in the reigns of Kings Uzziah of Judah and Jeroboam son of Joash of Israel, two years before the earthquake.…
Shemot 8: The Elders Slipped Out One by One
The whole of chapter three and part of four are taken up with the Divine call to Moses, his preparations for undertaking the mission, the overcoming of all his hesitations, from the historic promise…