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.
Judaism and Yiddish
“If God grant that the earth will be full of understanding, and everyone will speak the same language, Ashkenazic, then only (the form) Brisk will be written.” That is how Meir ben Moses Hacohen, the…
What Is Jewish Secular Culture?
We take Jewish secular culture here in its modern shape, its language form, Yiddish. It is not the first expression of worldly or secular Jewish culture. In ancient times almost the entire cultural…
On Yiddish Dialects
The following descriptions of Yiddish dialects have the same goal as the work published in Volume I of the Tsaytshrift [ journal]. For the most part, the material has been collected the same way…
The Miracle of Hebrew Reborn
Hebrew reborn—but, was it ever dead? Or, if it was, how can a dead language be born again?
The millions of Jews all over the world who say their daily prayers in Hebrew, not only understanding but…
Encyclopedia of the Łódź Ghetto
A group of people living together under extreme coercive conditions without the conscious intent of forming a community of common fate created forms that were only possible on the basis of the ghetto…
The Working Problems of the Writer in Exile
I will not dwell too long on the bitter theme of the many purely external difficulties with which the writer in exile must contend. I hope that those who have not experienced these difficulties…
Mapping a Culture
The very lack of a self-contained territory that has so far disqualified the study of Yiddish from NDEA [the National Defense Education Act] support endows Ashkenazic Jewry with exemplary value for a…
Toward a New Yiddish
[ . . . ] It seems to me we are ready to rethink ourselves in America now; to preserve ourselves by a new culture-making.
Now you will say that this is a vast and stupid contradiction following all I…
Light for the Path
We, the entire assembly of the congregation of Israel, believe that the Torah that is in our possession today is exactly the same as was written by Moses our master, peace be on him. From then until…
On the Language of the Jews Who Lived in Ancient Russia
In our previous studies we attempted to prove that the first Jews in southern Russian were not Germanic, as is claimed by Graetz and other German scholars, but rather Bosporan and Asian, as they…
Multilingual Exemplar Leaf
This sheet by the calligrapher and scribe Iehudah Machabeu presents samples of different “lettering,” including Hebrew (at the top), Arabic, Greek, Castilian, English, French, Italian, and Latin. It…
Livyat ḥen (Ornament of Grace)
A simple four-syllable poem, where each of the four members of the line has four tenu‘ot, with no yated. In some of them, the members do not rhyme…