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.
Sefer ha-ḥayim (The Book of Life)
In which it is explained that the essence of the Torah is the performance of the commandments, not intellectual knowledge; and also the reason why it is called the Talmud…
Orḥot ‘olam (Paths of the World)
On the existence and nature of a great and awesome, holy world, which is situated beyond the equator, and whether it is possible that there is a settlement south of this equator, called zo…
Dialoghi d’amore (Dialogues of Love)
[ . . . ] Philo: I have already told you that the cognition of the generating nature is meant to direct them towards their natural perfection, without any other…
Astronomical Illustration
This diagram of the cosmos is from a treatise on astronomy, Sefer mareh ha-ofanim (The Appearance of the Heavenly Beings), by Solomon ben Abraham Avigdor. The treatise was mostly a translation of…
Letter to the Friends of Lessing (On the Spinoza Conversations between Lessing and Jacobi)
Our friend’s devotion to Spinozism is not to be seen as a mere hypothesis (as the Patriarch in Nathan puts it), postulated simply in order to discuss its pros and cons. Herr Jacobi, a man of…
The Kabbalah, or The Religious Philosophy of the Hebrews
At a time when the worship of the dead letter degenerated into idolatry; at a time when men passed their lives in counting the verses, the words and the letters of the Law, at a time when the official…
In the Valley of Death
Human wisdom has limits—stupidity has none.
God created a world with gifts and blessings for all: earth and water, sun and air in plenty, rye and wheat in abundance, a potato for everyone, a roof…
Moses Mendelssohn, the German and Jewish Philosopher
Moses Mendelssohn’s German Philosophy did not survive him and his generation of the German Aufklärer. As the leading German philosopher, apart from some psychological and aesthetical theories, he…
Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors
In a phrase of Hermann Cohen, Maimonides is the “classic of rationalism” in Judaism. This phrase appears to us to be correct in a stricter sense than Cohen may have intended: Maimonides’…
Demons
The Three Ketovim
There are three Ketovim: in the early morning
One wanders off, who in the fresh bread
Has concealed his shameless anger.
Do not eat it, as it will lead to a painful death,
Over the…
Hear, O Israel
With his asses, male and female,
His woolly sheep and billy goats,
His oxen and his camels
Bearing wineskins on their backs,
With his wives and his handmaids,
His servants and his…
The Valley of Demons
Those matters discussed in an earlier issue dedicated to the practice of indolka inspired the distinguished writer to write this fine article.
Everything that I am relating here is neither eloquent…