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 Late-Comer
He will surely come with songs of joy, carrying the child, in the full assembly. My friends, wait here for the bridegroom of blood.
He should be coming down the road. Why is the child so late? You…
The Vow
I saw your figure in my dream, gazelle, flashing like lightning. It gave light to my darkened eyes, and I saw that your face was a model of the heavens. The sun and moon are set in it, the stars and…
After the Vision
How can I hew out a song when the hammer of my senses is coated with rust? How can I play the lute when my hand is ensnared in fetters of fear? For my heart has entered the gazelle’s paved [palace]…
The Old Whore’s Lament
Where are the merchants who used to chase after me to purchase my favours? O malevolent Time! Nowadays, they abhor my company; when I call for them, there is no answer. How has my merchandise been…
Shreds of Earth
On a night like this if a shudder were to shake your flesh as though a nightmare
had severed your sleep I could have risen and quietly walked to the kitchen
to write you a poem that would bring you…
Parnassus
Technically I was a man.This spindly squeaky thing with the Adam’s-apple accent was, by virtue of being thirteen and bar-mitzvahed, a technical man.And so the phone call came: they needed a tenth for…
Monument with Biblical Verse, Modern Jerusalem
Monument with biblical citation, modern Jerusalem. The monument, erected in a park, reads: “Thus said the Lord of Hosts: There shall yet be old men and women in the squares of Jerusalem, each with…
Model Chair
Since chairs and beds were valuable items and not found in average homes (people usually sat on the floor and slept on mats), it is possible that terra-cotta models like this one from Lachish…
Seal of Ḥaman (or Ḥiman), with Griffin and Locust
The upper register of this seal from Megiddo, made of black serpentine with white spots, has an image of a striding griffin wearing a kilt and an Egyptian double crown, with an Egyptian ankh symbol…
At Home in America: Second-Generation New York Jews
[…] Second-generation Jews, like their immigrant parents, succeeded in developing a nucleus of Jewishness, defined through secondary associations, that made being Jewish an impelling reality for their…
To Be a Jew in France in 1982
Confronted by difficult problems after 1945 (reconstruction of a community life after the physical and material losses of the Second World War, integration of successive and ever more numerous waves…