Open Search form

American Jewry

Apply for a Blog

Richard D. Gitlin

Oct 14, 2026, 4:44 AM

Tikkun Olam Begins at Home

I am not a rabbi or a scholar of Judaism. I am simply an American Jew who has watched with growing unease as Tikkun Olam, repairing the world, has become one of the defining ideas of Reform Judaism. There is...

Daphne Lazar Price

Oct 13, 2026, 5:14 PM

Corporate at the Top, Nonprofit at the Bottom

This recent article in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, titled When did $650,000 become a reasonable Jewish nonprofit salary? highlights a growing disparity in the Jewish nonprofit world: executive salaries that can reach $650,000 and much, much more, in a...

Oct 13, 2026, 7:59 AM

Seeing Red: Hubris and the Halakha of Space Flight

Rabbi Nachum Eliezer Rabinovitch, photo: Nadav Efrati / Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nahum_Eliezer_Rabinovitch

Vladimir Menshikov, Boga Nyet! [There is no God!], 1975. State Museum of the History of Religion in Saint Petersburg. Scaled-down, low-resolution image permitted under fair use clause, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%B0_%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%82_1975.jpg

In 1961, as humans reached Space, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Lubavitch (1902-1994) wrote a private letter in which he declared that Space travel was permitted according to Jewish law. The Lubavitcher Rebbe offered a broad, affirmative framework for...

Peter Himmelman

Oct 13, 2026, 4:52 AM

On Navi Pillay’s Nobel Peace Prize and Other Imponderables

Photography and collage by the author

On Navi Pillay’s Nobel Peace Prize and other imponderables It’s coming up on one year since I stood in the home of the Bibas family. A year since I released a modicum of the pent-up emotions I had carried since...

Kelsey Maurine Brickl

Oct 13, 2026, 4:44 AM

Here We Go Again: Seinfeld and the Disgrace of Onstage Meltdowns

In November 2006, Michael Richards stood onstage at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles and unleashed a racist tirade against Black audience members who had interrupted his performance. Richards, then best known for playing Cosmo Kramer on Seinfeld, repeatedly...

Oct 12, 2026, 7:55 PM

American Jewish Conceptzia: An Illusion of Safety

The Israeli word conceptzia is a Hebrew bastardization of “conception.” It was coined during the Agranat Commission, which investigated failures in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Conceptzia describes a strategic misconception that becomes entrenched in the minds of decision-makers...

Oct 12, 2026, 1:57 PM

What an ‘eruv’ taught me about fighting antisemitism

Illustrative. A segment of an eruv, including the plastic white pipe on the pole, as a 'lechi,' in Airmont, New York, on February 6, 2018. (Wehwalt/ Gary Greenbaum/ Wikipedia

Getting to know your local leadership now means you can turn to them later (I know; I was the politician tapped to help a NJ Jewish community)

David J. Michaels

Oct 12, 2026, 12:15 AM

Peace, But Not for the Jews? [with Robert Spitzer]

The selection of Navi Pillay for the Nobel Peace Prize is appalling. Potentially rivaling the inclusion of unreformed terrorist pioneer Yasser Arafat in receipt of the prize in 1994, the choice is not only arbitrary and undeserved but corrosive. It...

Oct 12, 2026, 12:08 AM

We Love the Same Land. So Why Don’t We Understand Each Other?

Tomorrow, my daughter leaves for Israel. She grew up in Miami, Florida. Sunshine, comfort, opportunity. She has always been an exceptional student, with the kind of academic future that could open doors almost anywhere. Georgetown had been a dream, and...

Adam O. Goldstein

Oct 12, 2026, 12:00 AM

How (not) to award a Nobel Peace Prize: A satire in 4 acts

Nobel Peace Prize judgments vs what it actually means to make peace

For nearly four decades, I have practiced medicine, conducted research, reviewed scientific manuscripts, and taught students that evidence should precede conclusions. I have insisted that investigators disclose conflicts of interest, consider competing explanations, and remain willing to revise their...

Load more