The Future of Jewish

The lesson of the Holocaust was never simply to despise Nazis. It was to recognize the machinery of hatred before the destination becomes obvious.

October 7th reminded us what can be taken from us. The High Holidays ask what we are willing to rebuild.

Rabbi Eli Schlanger entered my life when I was barely alive. His murder has forced me to confront faith, evil, and what it means to carry his light forward.

When it comes to the Jewish state, the accusation is the evidence.

The uncomfortable truth is that normal may not return. The more important truth is that Jews do not need normal in order to endure.

Of all the fields in which Jews have achieved wildly beyond our numbers, chess may be the most striking.

This is what happens when the Jewish calendar becomes the rhythm of an entire country.

For anyone who has ever wondered why the Jews are celebrating New Year’s in September.

Judaism does not ask us to erase what broke. It asks us to make something from it.

Twenty-five years later, many in the West have forgotten the warning about ideology, extremism, and the dangers of explaining away those who tell us exactly what they believe.

First they tried to destroy the Jewish state. Then they hijacked our story.

If Palestinians have a right to live among Jews, why is Jewish life among Palestinians treated as an obstacle to peace?

New York City was once the Jewish capital of America. What happened?

Our answer to the Iranian regime’s “ring of fire” contains four circles.

Modern psychology gives us labels. Judaism gives us a path out of them.

These words sound like competing descriptions of the same conflict, but they are not. They describe two fundamentally different political instincts.

The Jewish state must never again be forced to beg others for the means to defend itself.

Sorry, but “tikkun olam” doesn’t mean becoming a martyr.

Israel has become far too important to people whose lives it barely affects.

The Jews did what dozens of other stateless peoples did — but only our independence is called “colonialism.”

One word tells us we are loved. The other tells us we are accountable. Judaism demands both.

We have spent much of our history being told that Jews were paranoid shortly before discovering that we were not paranoid enough. I suspect that is precisely the point we are at now.

What happened in Jaffa in 1921 complicates almost everything we are told about the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We did everything the West asked of a minority — we integrated, contributed, and prospered — yet somehow became guilty for succeeding.

What do you do when you realize that some of what you blamed on a relationship or another person is actually coming from you? That is the question Selichot forces us to confront.

Everyone has an opinion about Israel. Almost nobody looks at the map.

Anti-Zionism increasingly depends on pretending that Israel and the Jewish people are two unrelated things.

Conflict is not proof that something has failed. Oftentimes, it is the beginning of transformation.

For too many Jews, defending Israel now begins with a disclaimer or, even worse, an apology. It shouldn’t.

The idea that Jews can end antisemitism by changing their politics is one of history’s oldest lies.

They have no shortage of supporters. What they lack are friends willing to tell them the truth.

Peter Parker is probably a good Jewish boy from Queens.

Israel is expected to answer for its worst extremists, Palestinians are often excused from theirs, and violence elsewhere is purely ignored. Welcome to the double standard of being a Jew.

The old demand was assimilation. The new one is ideological surrender.

I thought the question was whether to hold on or walk away. Judaism taught me the deeper question is whether I am willing to evolve before I try again.

Publishers are asking us to remove our Jewish names, sever our connection to Israel, and make our books less Jewish. Meanwhile, obvious antisemitism is treated as a harmless “viewpoint.”

I went looking for wisdom everywhere — except Judaism. Then I joined a weekly Torah study group and realized I had spent years searching for something I had inherited at birth.

Who actually lived in the area known as “Palestine” before the State of Israel was founded? Old records tell a very different story about Palestinian origins.

The Israelis took one of America’s greatest military technologies and made it uniquely their own.

Judaism understands things about love that would change how many of today’s relationships survive and even thrive.

One of the most successful propaganda campaigns of the modern era has convinced millions (billions?) of people that the real masters of propaganda are “the Zionists.” It is a remarkable inversion.

After decades of dead ends, Israeli researchers are working on a new way to attack one of the world’s deadliest tumors.

There is nothing un-Jewish about defeating those who seek to destroy us.

The problem is not that Palestinians have never been given a chance to govern themselves. It is what happened when they were.

They disagree about religion, capitalism, gender, democracy, and almost everything else — but somehow, “the Jews” still bring them together.

We cannot truly love a country because it never lets us down. We should love it because we still choose it even and especially when it does.

The Israelis and Turks were once allies. Syria could make them direct enemies.

The Soviet Union’s most successful export wasn’t communism. It was anti-Zionism.

The goal should not be to stop every war, but to create the conditions that make the next one unlikely.

Likud’s dominance was never inevitable. Neither is its survival.