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Aug 30, 2026, 5:03 PM

What Ten Days Conceal, on Aseret Yemei Teshuvah

We call these days the Ten Days, we always have. But when I counted, I found only seven days between the end of Rosh Hashanah and the start of Yom Kippur. To reach ten, you have to fold in...

Aug 25, 2026, 3:06 AM

Two Voices One State: Ireland 1937–1945

How a country remembers a period is often less simple than what actually happened during it. Thinking about Ireland's years in the Second World War, we first look for a single story, either heroism or guilt. But what historians...

Aug 23, 2026, 6:44 AM

A Cry or a Laugh on the Real Name of Rosh Hashanah

Preparing for Rosh Hashanah this year, I noticed something, the name I always use isn't one the Torah ever uses. The Torah itself never once calls this day Rosh Hashanah. It only calls it Yom Teruah, the day of...

Aug 18, 2026, 4:41 AM

A Principle in the Fog, Ireland’s Boycott

In organizational sociology, a 1977 paper by John Meyer and Brian Rowan, published in the American Journal of Sociology, became one of the field's most cited texts. Meyer and Rowan argued that an institution's formal structures often exist not...

Aug 16, 2026, 6:59 AM

A Name That Came Back From Exile, on Elul

Most of the time, saying a month's name, we don't think about what it carries inside it, we just say it and move on. This year, saying Elul, I stopped. And stopping, I saw that the word itself, like...

Aug 11, 2026, 6:40 AM

The Turning Point, Germany’s Rearmament and Israel

On February 27, 2022, three days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz stood before the Bundestag and used a single word, Zeitenwende, turning point. What he announced that day wasn't just a budget increase. Germany's constitution, the Grundgesetz,...

Aug 9, 2026, 6:43 AM

Israel, The Name That Outlived Ruin

This is the black granite Merneptah Stele, discovered by Flinders Petrie in Thebes in 1896 and dating to the reign of Pharaoh Merneptah. It contains the earliest known written reference to the name Israel. The line that is commonly translated as “Israel is laid waste, its seed is no more” appears in the hieroglyphic text in the lower section of the stele. One particularly important detail is that Egypt refers to Israel as a people rather than as a city or kingdom. The stele is now displayed at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

When we look at a name, we usually stop at its meaning and go no further, rarely asking where it came from. I prefer the opposite, tracing a name back to its root, because a name often hides more...

Aug 4, 2026, 6:04 AM

The Silent Veto: Qatar’s Enduring Structural Power

In April 2026, Volkswagen and Rafael signed a letter of intent. The German company's struggling Osnabrück plant would produce components for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system, a deal meant to save 2,300 jobs. VW's CEO, Oliver Blume, had...

Aug 2, 2026, 4:54 AM

Shin, The Letter Two Sources Tell Differently

In Kabbalistic tradition, letters are never treated as mere linguistic tools. Among the twenty-two letters, Shin (ש) carries some of the most layered readings. But those layers don't always agree with each other, sometimes they pull against one another,...

Jul 28, 2026, 4:26 AM

Competing Fields, Young American Jewish Identity

I used Cameron Bernstein's sentence in my last piece, she prays for the people on that land but doesn't need to pray for the state. I read that sentence as evidence of AIPAC's institutional crisis. But looking at the...

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About Me

Sociologist with an M.A. in Political Sociology, Therapist, Relationship Counselor, Life Coach, and Certified NLP Trainer, with formal training in Kabbalah and Gematria. Blogger and Podcast Host focusing on human behavior, relationships, consciousness, and personal transformation.

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