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Barry Mellinger

Jun 2, 2026, 2:29 PM

My Heart Is in the East

American Colony (Jerusalem). Photo Dept., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Before we can talk about anything, about Zionism, about Palestine, about 1948, about the argument I actually want to have across this series, we have to sit for a moment with something strange. Something so familiar to Jews that...

Steven C. Wernick

May 30, 2026, 12:33 AM

Anatevka Had No Fourth Path. We Do.

Monday night I saw Fiddler on the Roof. In Yiddish. Part of it was intellectual curiosity. Yiddish was the lingua franca of that world. Sholem Aleichem wrote in Yiddish. Tevye der Milkhiker — Tevye the Dairyman — was born in...

Heather Cathleen Cox

May 22, 2026, 12:08 AM

Across the Øresund: Meeting Elisabeth, Walking Copenhagen with Bente (Part Two)

The Baltic cold has a way of entering the body slowly. In Dragør harbor, the February wind rolled off the Øresund with a bitterness that settled into my gloves, my face, even my breathing. Fishing boats rocked quietly against...

May 11, 2026, 7:00 PM

UK Antisemitism Moves From Margins to Mainstream

Visual cited from the Pexels website and is free for overall use on a commercial platform: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-black-suit-jackets-and-black-hats-3501127/

A surge in antisemitic intimidation, paired with political equivocation, is testing Britain’s civic compact and exposing the state’s difficulty in confronting modern extremism. Britain likes to imagine itself as a country tempered by moderation: pragmatic in politics, restrained in rhetoric...

Sam Lehman-Wilzig

May 8, 2026, 11:26 AM

Israel & the Diaspora Moving Apart: Déjà Vu All Over Again

The relationship between Israel and world Diaspora Jews, especially American Jewry, has been deteriorating these past few years. So what else is new? This is a process that has been going on for the past 2,500 years, ever since the...

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

May 2, 2026, 12:42 PM

What We Owe Our Children, Not Our Enemies

A community does not betray itself by asking difficult questions. It betrays itself when it leaves those questions to its enemies. A movement built to rescue a people becomes dangerous when it can no longer recognize the difference between rescue...

Apr 28, 2026, 8:10 PM

Spinoza and the Butterfly Effect. Part 2: The Gathering Storm

In Part 1 of this series, I discussed Uriel Da Costa and Spinoza and their encounters with the Jewish religious authorities, and the subsequent herems. Uriel da Costa and Baruch Spinoza rank high on the list of grand herems....

Apr 26, 2026, 7:32 AM

Book review – Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey out of Hasidism

In his new book, Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey out of Hasidism, Zalman Newfield (associate professor of sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College) writes from the vantage point of a teenager who could not find his place in Orthodox...

Apr 17, 2026, 1:55 AM

Remembering My Best Friend Betty During Melanoma Awareness Month

Sharon and Betty celebrating their birthdays together in April 2000. Photo courtesy of the author.

It was August 27, 2009, my son Brady’s 17th birthday. My best friend Betty called me to wish Brady a happy birthday. Betty and I had gone through our pregnancies together. Betty’s daughter Nicole was born six weeks after my...

Apr 14, 2026, 1:17 AM

My Experience Leading 200 Women to Capitol Hill for Hadassah Day of Impact 2026

Pictured left to right: Co-Chairs Jill Goldstone and Joyce Laiter at Hadassah's 2026 Day on The Hill Meetings in Washington DC. Photo courtesy of the author.

America will soon be 250 years old. That’s not a long time in the history of the world or of world governments. But it’s been enough time to embrace our democratic system and to continue perfecting what was once...

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