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.
The Advocate
In his book Ha-metsaref [The Purifier], vol. II §182, Rabbi Moses Kunitz wrote:
The term am ha-arets [lit., “People of the Land,” often meaning boors] was applied to people of various dispositions…
Springtime in the Hospital
Is it any wonder that the sick are so pure and tender,
gazing across vast distances, seeing things that no one else does,
staying up at night, and smiling in the darkness,
as they caress their beds…
Building Boom
The avenue of willows leads nowhere:
it begins at the blank wall of a new apartment house
and ends in the middle of a lot for sale.
Papers and cans are thrown about the trees.
The disorder does not…
I Am the Knight
I am the knight of yearned-for blue
On God’s rosy, holy ways.
My yearning is white like milk and dew
And sweet as the honey-rain.
My armor, my sword—my word and my blood.
My sign—the green of cedar…
The Horse and the Whip
“May an unforeseen disaster
Overtake your worthy master,
The wagoner, Reb Benjamin,
And strike at you along with him.”
The horse was saying
to the whip and neighing,
“Did you ever
Hear of such a…
Three Old Women
In the grey evening, beside the white house, three old ladies sit, gazing straight ahead. And stillness all around. As if the eagle had suddenly frozen in flight. Three old ladies sit beside the…
A Trip in the Opposite Direction
It’s one in the morning. I’m writing this poem
in a train station.
What does poetry have to do with trains?
I came here unexpectedly
traveling the wrong way.
Telling the story is risky:
I was…
Three Foundations (Sholem Aleichem and the Yiddish Literary Tradition)
[ . . . ] Why is fame accorded to this particular individual, far and beyond his own time and place and why does he continue to capture new readers both in the original and in translation? [ . . . P…
The Voice
On a forgone and alien diaspora night,
Far, far in the midst of childhood,
A heavy bottomless darkness closed upon me,
Surrounding me in fear and horror.
Somewhere in Yemen in the district of…
Twelve Faces of the Emerald
I am exceedingly green: chill green.
What have I to do
with all the greenishness of chance?
I am the green-source, the green-self,
one and incomparable.
The Challenge Facing Modern Jewish Scholarship
[ . . . ] Moreover, the ideal of Torah as an end in itself was never felt to be in opposition to the ideal of Torat hayyim—“the Torah as a gateway to life.” Whatever the logician might argue…
The Alphabet
The letters of the Jews as strict as flames
Or little terrible flowers lean
Stubbornly upwards through the perfect ages,
Singing through solid stone the sacred names.
The letters of the Jews are…