The Future of Jewish

The Jewish state's greatest strength is not only its army, but a society that drives ordinary people to become extraordinary when it matters most.

Modern morning routines ask us to improve our life. Judaism asks us to begin by noticing it.

October 7th exposed the limits of Israel's old military assumptions. Now the IDF is building something very different.

The story of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani begins decades earlier — in his father's distortions about colonialism, nationalism, the Holocaust, Israel, and terrorism.

Sukkot is about far more than huts and harvests. It is a blueprint for how Jews survive, build, rejoice, and remain a people.

We remember Israel's first and only female prime minister for the failures of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. October 7th made me reconsider what leadership looks like when every option is terrible.

The Jewish future cannot be built on sympathy alone. We need to turn solidarity into something more tangible.

World leaders came to lecture Israel — and repeatedly tripped over facts, history, and their own hypocrisy.

Twenty-five years ago, Jews went to the “United Nations World Conference Against Racism” to fight racism. They left learning that Jew-hatred would be treated differently.

The world has far more to gain from working with Israel than from hating it. That was the case I wanted the Israeli prime minister to make.

Sukkot asks us to distinguish between the boundaries worth preserving and the fortresses we no longer need.

The machinery is new. The manipulation is familiar. And the Jews still find themselves in the crosshairs.

From university campuses to acclaimed intellectuals, the line between understanding terrorism and excusing it is disappearing.

The people who will live with the consequences deserve more than a slogan that fits on a protest sign.

Hyperbole has turned the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a contest of moral absolutes. When everything is genocide, apartheid, and absolute evil, what happens to historical truth?

You don't have to take sides in the Middle East to take responsibility for what happens on your stage.

More than 50 years later, the Yom Kippur War still has secrets, surprises, and lessons worth uncovering.

From the destruction of the First Temple to the synagogues of today, Aramaic reminds us that Jewish identity can endure even when everything around us changes.

This Yom Kippur, the question is not simply what we have done wrong, but what we have failed to learn.

I helped convince people that Jews were their enemy. Now I want them to understand how wrong I was — and how I found out.

We have confused one of Judaism's greatest gifts with Judaism itself.

They rebuilt their lives after the Holocaust. Then came the “anti-Zionist” campaign that sounds all too familiar to the one we are witnessing today.

A Jewish life doesn't have to be all or nothing. Sometimes, a little is the beginning of a lot.

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.