Jon-Erik G. Storm, at The Blogs

Jon-Erik G. Storm

Aug 23, 2026, 11:45 AM

The most important legal transaction of my life took about 30 seconds and cost five silver coins. My son was 31 days old. We gathered at our shul on California's Central Coast, poured wine, and stood him before a kohen....

Apr 25, 2026, 12:54 AM

US Review of Falklands Exposes Euro Hypocrisy

When several NATO allies failed to cooperate with the Iran war, the Pentagon launched a review of, among other things, the UK's sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, the subject of a war between the UK and Argentina in 1983...

Mar 2, 2026, 1:41 AM

The Purim War And The New Jewish World

This war did not start on Purim, but as of this writing there is little reason to believe it will stop before then. But this slight deviation is made up for by the enormous historical resonances of the Purim...

Oct 31, 2025, 11:22 PM

Featured Post

Are American rabbis up for these times?

They should worry less about keeping their congregations together and more about the future of Jews in the Diaspora

Sep 14, 2025, 12:47 AM

Safe Gun Ownership Does Make Jews Safer

Recently in these pages, Rebecca Fischer argues that "guns don't make Jews safer." The fundamental flaw in Fischer's piece is her conflation of gun ownership and loose gun regulation. Let's accept the premise for the sake of the argument that: Strong...

Aug 13, 2025, 7:58 AM

On U2 On Gaza

It’s amazing how little it takes to make a statement about Israel and Gaza relatively reasonable and doubly amazing how rare it is to find one. I don’t agree with a lot that U2 said in their post. For one...

Oct 8, 2024, 12:04 AM

I’ve Got Nothing.

For the better part of the last year, I promised myself I would organize and write something interesting for this day, the one year anniversary of 10/7. Now that the day has arrived, I've got nothing. It's not that...

Nov 4, 2022, 7:54 PM

The Israel we knew is still here, Tom

There are two articles at the top of the New York Times website today. One is an article about antisemitism and another is a hyperventilated op-ed from Thomas Friedman claiming that "the Israel we knew is gone." Friedman is among...

May 9, 2022, 11:31 PM

Matthew Hale And Witch Hunts

A definition of a witch hunt is "a search for evidence of witchcraft." Ironically, one of the best examples right now was given by a Twitter thread stoking Internet rage about the citation of a certain British jurist, Matthew...

Dec 5, 2019, 10:03 PM

Valerie Plame, The Illiberal Left, And The Jews

If you ask a decently informed American who Valerie Plame is, the answer you will get is probably that she was the CIA spy that was “outed” by the Bush Administration in retaliation for her husband penning an op-ed...

About Me

Jon-Erik G. Storm is a lawyer, a scholar of Jewish texts, and educator. He holds a graduate degree in Jewish studies from Hebrew College, taught religion and philosophy at Cuesta College, taught Hebrew school, and served as president of the Jewish Federation of San Luis Obispo County. In The Stayed Hand, his first book, he brings a litigator's discipline of evidence to the oldest question in the Hebrew Bible.