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.
A Shklov Moon on Arbat Street
The other day I met a Jew from Shklov on Arbat Street, directly opposite the entrance to the Vakhtangov Theater, and he told me about the moon he knew in Shklov, which urged him to Moscow. The Jew was…
Letter to Rachel Bluwstein
Kinneret, 12 Nissan, 5674 [8 April 1914]
There was a time when the writing of a letter, like the receiving of a letter, was in itself like a holiday for me. I lived in letters—as I told you once and…
Higher School for Jewish Studies
The problem concerning the establishment of a Higher School for Jewish studies, which was recently raised by the Society for the Promotion of Culture Among the Jews of Russia (OPE), should be…
Scorched Earth
. . . An empty street. An unfamiliar shack. A tightly shut gate. And hanging over the gate, over the dead street, over us all—a Cossack cap with a raspberry-colored band. A trail of smoke from an…
The Sexual Life
Love is a net that nature spreads out in order to multiply humankind. (Love also exists among animals.) Only complete love is true love. True love does not have any higher or lower…
God’s Trial
When the forest-writer Avraham-Yisroel moved from the woods into the city, he had his own wife, three daughters, and two sons. He also had…
Quite a Bank
There’s a stale, sour stench: a miscellany of heaped-up vegetables and fruits, cheese, fried fish, sweaty bodies, thighs, urine, and belching drunks. The smell sneaks harsh but titillating into the…
Song of My Indifference
For some the now is good enough—and that is fine for them!But what shall I dowhen I alwayssee before mephosphorescent questions flashing:Where?Where to?I am ready tiredof hovering,of flickering,of…
The Quest for Perfection
Indeed, our human situation now stands on such a low level that we need not look either to intellectual or to outside factors to account for its stumbling blocks or confusions. Nowadays, if one is in…
The Black Rooster
This story admittedly took place a long time ago and furthermore in a far-off land—in England, in fact. Yet in spite of everything, it is still important and worthy of being…
My Palms Are Raised toward You
My palms are raised toward you,
To the little light
Which I still have in your eyes,
And you—sharpen your teeth
For the softness of my yellow flesh;
And were this flesh to be thrown upon the field
An…
On Otto Weininger’s Sex and Character
When a woman has within herself as much of what is masculine as a man has within himself of what is feminine—i.e., what he lacks in Masculinity, then in their sexual union the divided parts of M and F…