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.
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…
Joseph the Righteous
Zlikha:I will leave him in prison now[for] he has committed a great sin.May he taste the recompense of his evil deed thereand may this wicked man die.[They take Yosef and she remains perplexed and at…
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…
Beyond Melody
With a violin in the alley grandfather and son disappeared.
Again the night was closed. Oh, speak, please speak!
I who grew up with all your stones,
I knew—like confession, they too would break.
St…
The Vigil
This is a night of vigil for me,
in the shudder of my soul
I shall conceal
the secret of my youth.
I shall stand on guard:
No sleep nor slumber!
And in just one moment
the veil was taken away.
A…
Paraphrase
The Bible tells us that from the heights
Moses blessed the children of Israel,
showing them God’s Promised Land,
where Moses himself never entered.
Like ships passing by when land is in sight
so…
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…
Acclimatization
I forget meticulously
I forget scrupulously
my native landscape
my daily landscape
I forget the ragged
I forget the billowy
clouds in a sky
clouds over a town
I forget to the end
I forget…