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.
On the Cutting Edge of Life
The men, women, and children who arrived, physically destroyed, at the death camp, had only one fixed idea: to survive. The average person, living in a bustling metropolis and enjoying freedom to a…
The Jews, Their History, Culture, and Religion
The purpose of this book is to bring into focus the vast number and wide variety of data concerning Judaism and the Jews, so that they can be seen in relation to one another and to the…
Isaac Babel, Introduction to Collected Stories
A good many years ago, in 1929, I chanced to read a book which disturbed me in a way I can still remember. The book was called Red Cavalry; it was a collection of stories about Soviet regiments of…
The Jew Who Wasn’t There
It is not unusual for committed Jewish women to be uneasy about their position as Jews. It was to cry down our doubts that rabbis developed their pre-packaged orations on the nobility of motherhood…
Toldot rabenu he-hakham Mosheh ben Menahem (Biography of Our Wise Teacher, Moses, Son of Menachem)
On the twelfth of the month of Elul in the year five thousand four hundred and eighty-nine, Menaḥem the scribe and teacher of young children in the community of Dessau, became the father of Moses,…
Account of His Visit to Lublin
I was privileged to visit Lublin with my late father when I was a boy of nine, and I saw his [the Seer’s] face illuminated like torches. And when he opened the door to recite Ke-gavnah [An Aramaic…
In Praise of the Ba‘al Shem Tov
While he was on his journey, Elijah the Prophet revealed himself to him and said: “Because of the merit of your behavior a son will be born to you who will bring light to Israel…
The Hypocrite
After finishing the letter, Elisheva handed it back to Hogeh and gracefully added: “Would that letters such as this might appear more often in our literature! For only such refinement of language will…
Reader for Jewish Children
The Lion’s Chancellor, the Wolf, was taken to court by all the animals, who complained that no living being was safe from his predatory jaws. “This insatiable creature…
Megaleh temirin (The Revealer of Secrets)
Thus I went to all the tsadikim and I heard what they say in secret, and I also took the letters that they or those who serve them sent to one another and they didn’t see, because by means of the…
A Great Announcement
God be praised, it is now a year since we began printing our supplement to Ha-melits, the Kol mevaser, the world’s first newspaper in plain Yiddish. At first, many people ridiculed us, but time has…