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.
Isadora Duncan
“Miss Duncan? The dancer? What is that—ballet?” No, it is not ballet. Missing here are the two predominant elements that make up modern ballet: there is neither dance technique nor women wearing…
Letters from the Ghettos
The two hundred and fifty letters presented here require no preliminaries or commentary. No human language is adequate to the task. Even the account of our people’s history, drenched as…
Haman’s Downfall
Mordecai:A Judgment Day on you and all the Hamans, today and forevermore—
Haman:Amen! Mordecai, I think you and I will yet be good friends—yes, Motya? [Maudlin.] Come closer, Motya, and I’ll tell you…
The Only One in the Town
Meylekh Snitkever takes the heavy shears and looks at them silently. He holds them in both hands as if to weigh them. Then he shifts his stare to me, the muscles moving in his jaws, which are covered…
Silence, and a Starry Night
Silence, and a starry night
Frost crackling, fine as sand.
Remember how I taught you
To hold a gun in your hand?
In fur jacket and beret,
Clutching a hand grenade,
A girl whose skin is velvet
Ambus…
Blessed Is the Match
Blessed is the match, consumed in kindling flame.
Blessed is the flame that burns in the heart’s secret places.
Blessed is the heart that knows, for honors sake, to stop its beating.
Blessed is the…
Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel
Eretz-Israel [The Land of Israel] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural…
On Literature and the State
Our state is young, with a girl’s years, just fourteen. Still without her shoes, as the poet says. But she seems old, many generations old. In these few years, old age has pounced on her. No one is…
A Common Grave
To the sacred memory of dear Shmulik and his comrades who fell in the battle to liberate Yeḥi‘amHe rose from the bed shading his eyes with his hands as if it was light although it was still dark. His…
Dudu
Across a red horizon evening descends
In the breeze treetops tremble and sway
As we sit around the campfire and tell
Of a Palmach man, Dudu was his name
He was with us on long exhausting treks
We…
A Well in the Field
Shepherds had dug a well in the field
but herds of others encircled it.
They left, roaming the mountain trails,
the shepherds who had dug it.
Oh, oh, oh! Desert oases . . .
the lanes of the herd…
Kol Hakavod!
At noon in the kasbah
When the souk was packed
I’d be walking around
My chest toned and hard
And they’d all be saying: What a guy
And as I walked down the alleyways
From every window…