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Gershon Blumstein

Loyalty to covenant, not to any one leader

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Oct 29, 2026, 11:56 PM

The Israel I inherited, the Israel I wrestle with

I inherited my love of Israel. Nobody told me that one day I might have to work out what that love requires of me. Growing up, Israel was woven into the Jewish story I knew before I understood politics. My...

Oct 24, 2026, 11:41 PM

A Cause Is Not a Credential

What Jewish Tradition Teaches Us About Israel, Loyalty, and the Limits of Power Over the past several years, I have found myself wrestling with an uncomfortable question: What would a politician have to do before support for Israel was no...

Oct 23, 2026, 3:07 AM

When Conservative Jews Seek Outside Authority

The question is not whether our movement is always right. It is whether we still trust it enough to ask why. A few months ago, at kiddush after services, someone raised a question about Jewish practice. Another congregant mentioned what...

Oct 19, 2026, 1:29 AM

Before We Put Someone on Trial

Religious Freedom, the Constitution, and the Jewish Obligation to Judge Fairly “Will you denounce it?” I have come to distrust this question. Not because condemnation is unimportant, but because the question can end the discussion ought to begin. Sometimes it is...

Oct 15, 2026, 2:32 AM

Trustees of Sinai

What Conservative Judaism Taught Me About Stewardship The older I get, the more I find myself asking a question I did not spend much time thinking about when I was younger: What happens to the things we have been given...

Oct 11, 2026, 5:38 PM

What Judaism Teaches About Loss and Hope

There are moments in life when we lose more than what happened. We lose what we believed would happen next. A marriage ends, and we lose not only the person but the years we imagined growing old together. A diagnosis changes...

Oct 10, 2026, 1:39 AM

When the Heart Breaks

What Judaism Teaches Us About the Future We Thought We Had Heartbreak takes more than a person from our lives. It takes a future. There is the conversation you thought you would have next week, the journey you imagined taking together, the...

Oct 6, 2026, 8:57 PM

The Judaism That Lives

How Halakhah Learns to Read a Changing World Beneath almost every Jewish question lies another, more difficult one: How do we live Torah in a world that keeps changing? We are about to ask that question in ways no previous generation...

Oct 4, 2026, 6:10 PM

The Judaism That Lets Us Become

What We Inherit, What We Change, and What We Give Forward I have carried a question for most of my life, though I did not always know I was carrying it. What does it mean to inherit Judaism? For years, I believed...

Oct 3, 2026, 7:19 PM

The Judaism That Refuses to Choose

Tradition, Change, and the Jewish Conversation That Belongs to All of Us Every Jewish movement has a story it tells about itself. Orthodoxy speaks in the language of preservation. Reform speaks in the language of moral evolution. But Conservative Judaism speaks...

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About Me

Gershon is a retired high technology professional, community educator, and nonprofit volunteer leader in Michigan. He writes about Torah, civic responsibility, and the intersection of Jewish life, ethics, and modern communal challenges.