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.
Coin with Ear
The image of an ear on this coin may symbolize God as the one who hears prayers, as in passages such as Psalm 34:16, 18, and Psalm 130:2. The image is paralleled on Egyptian stelas that depict…
Figures Looking over City Wall
These fragments of a mural from Kuntillet Ajrud show two human heads, facing left and looking out over their city’s wall, which is flanked by towers. The mural may have been part of a military scene…
Who Shall Bear Guilt for the Holocaust?
A simple searing truth emerges from the vast body of research and writing on the Holocaust. It is that European Jewry was ground to dust between the twin millstones of a murderous Nazi intent and a…
Justice and Judicial Procedures
You shall appoint magistrates and officials for your tribes, in all the settlements that the Lord your God is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice. You shall…
Fringes
The Lord said to Moses as follows: Speak to the Israelite people and instruct them to make for themselves fringes on the corners of their garments throughout the ages; let them attach a cord of…
Imposition of a Judicial Oath
On the 18th of Phaophi, year four of Artaxerxes the king in Elephantine the fortress, Malchiah son of Jashobiah, an Aramean, hereditary-property-holder in Elephantine the fortress of the detachment of…
The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity
Some time ago, as I sat down to work in a Tel Aviv café in the area where I live, an elderly man suddenly approached me. “You are the son of Eliahu Shaharabani, of blessed memory,” he said, half…
From “The Proverbs of Solomon”
Better a dry crust with peace
Than a house full of feasting with strife.
A capable servant will dominate an incompetent son
And share the inheritance with the brothers.
For silver—the crucible;
Fo…
Advice and Further Reflections
When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it. For He has no pleasure in fools; what you vow, fulfill. It is better not to vow at all than to vow and not fulfill. [ . . . ]
If…
Nijinsky as the Faun
The cover of the theater program for the Ballets Russes’ seventh season is illustrated with an image of Vaslav Nijinsky wearing a costume designed by Léon Bakst for the ballet L’Apres-Midi d’un Faune…
David’s Letter to Joab
In the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab, which he sent with Uriah. He wrote in the letter as follows: “Place Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest; then fall back so that he…
Portrait of Marc Chagall
Yehudah Pen painted this portrait of Marc Chagall soon after Chagall returned to Vitebsk from Paris in order to marry his sweetheart, Bella. While he was there, World War I broke out, and Chagall was…