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Grant Arthur Gochin

Jun 25, 2026, 10:13 PM

An Aliyah to the Torah and Tears of Joy

Courtesy of Author

From Papilė to Zurich, l’dor v’dor Nearly fifty years ago, on November 13, 1976, my grandfather Samuel Gochin was called to the Torah at my bar mitzvah in South Africa. He was 75 years old. Next weekend, in Zurich, I will...

Shanee B. Michaelson

Jun 16, 2026, 5:17 AM

The summer after my first year of college, I arrived at sleepaway camp for the first time in my life—not as a camper, but as a counselor. At nineteen, I was older than the campers and on the precipice...

Andy Blumenthal

Jun 14, 2026, 10:08 AM

Be Bold and Settle Our Entire Land of Israel

This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government moved forward with one of the most significant Zionist initiatives in decades, allocating over $350 million to authorize and establish 61 new Jewish communities in the ancestral heartland of Judea and Samaria....

May 25, 2026, 9:42 AM

The Sacred and the Light Up Dance Floor

My family and I just celebrated our middle daughter’s bat mitzvah, and throughout all the moments–the ceremonious, the silly, the profound–I couldn’t help but to ponder this millenia-old tradition. Growing up in suburban Houston in the late 80s, I was...

Mihran Kalaydjian

May 25, 2026, 7:22 AM

When Jews Are Told They Don’t Belong Again

For decades after the Holocaust, civilized society agreed on one moral line that could never be crossed again: Jews would never again be treated as outsiders in the societies they helped build. Today, that line is eroding before our eyes. Across...

May 23, 2026, 11:33 AM

What Adam Sandler knows about being Jewish

Idina Menzel and Adam Sandler in a scene from the Netflix film 'You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah.' (Scott Yamano/Netflix)

A joke in a teen comedy hides a Shavuot lesson about the meaning of accepting — and choosing — Judaism today

May 22, 2026, 5:39 PM

Treasure Trove: The Original Selfie Machine Turns 100

From the Herzl and Zionism Collection of David Matlow, Toronto (www.herzlcollection.com). Photo taken in a photo both at Montreal's Expo 67.

The original selfie machine turns 100 this year. The photo booth made its first appearance in September 1926 on Broadway in New York City. It was the invention of Anatol Josepho (1894-1980, born Josephewitz), and first called the Photomaton. Siberian born,...

Andy Blumenthal

May 17, 2026, 8:16 AM

Why I Came Back to Shul

For years, one of the absolute best perks of returning regularly to synagogue has been rediscovering a very specific, distinctly Jewish superpower: our humor. It’s warm, deeply self-aware, and forged through millennia of practicing the art of the collective...

Apr 13, 2026, 1:11 PM

How Did We Get Here?

I must admit I’m really not all that smart. This won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who knows me, but what the people I am closest to have figured out is while this is true, I...

Reuven Chaim Klein

Jan 17, 2026, 11:38 PM

Fillin’ Up the Tefillin – tefillin and totafot

One of the first commandments that the Jews received is the mitzvah of wearing phylacteries, which is a sort of ritual garment meant to symbolize and commemorate the Jews’ miraculous exodus from Egypt. Although those phylacteries are commonly known in Hebrew...

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