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Joel M. Greenberg

Sep 17, 2026, 8:30 PM

The Illusion of Certainty

This week, as Yom Kippur approaches, I keep thinking about one line I read in a Torah Anytime Rosh Hashanah booklet, in an article by Rabbi Bentzion Shafier. He suggested looking through the obituary section of a newspaper. Young...

Walter Estever Gonzalez

Sep 17, 2026, 6:51 AM

Seven Passports for a Journey That Never Happened

Walter Estever Gonzalez at approximately four or five years old in El Salvador. This surviving copy comes from a photograph taken for a passport intended for a family journey to Mexico that never took place. (Courtesy of the author)

There is a photograph of me from when I was four or five years old. I am wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt and looking directly at the camera with the seriousness children sometimes have when adults tell them not...

Silas Anastacio

Sep 13, 2026, 11:49 PM

Exclusive: Laura Feldman on CIP’s 90-Year Legacy and Future Vision

Laura Feldman, President of the Congregação Israelita Paulista (CIP), reflects on the challenges of preserving Jewish identity in a changing world, the importance of dialogue, and the legacy her generation hopes to leave as the institution approaches its centennial. Founded...

Hagit Zadok Fefferman

Sep 3, 2026, 5:24 AM

My grandparents told me about Auschwitz at 8; I took baths for a year

A young Hagit with her beloved grandparents, Boris and Rose.

The shiny metal showerhead was staring down at me. From where I stood, it seemed impossibly high above my eight-year-old body. Yesterday, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Today I stared back at it with fear. Earlier that...

Sep 1, 2026, 12:15 AM

One of the requirements for entering high school, which in Vienna begins at age ten, was the purchase of a Welt Atlas. I have mine to this day. Bound in red linen with gold letters and covered in translucent plastic, it...

Julian Ungar-Sargon

Aug 31, 2026, 12:12 AM

The Street and the Home, Part I

Vienna, the Ostjude, and the Jewish Shadow Julian Ungar-Sargon, MD, PhD — Former Clinical Director, PA Program, Borra College of Health Sciences, Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois "One can leave Vienna; Vienna does not easily leave the soul." The stone should not...

Alexander Lutsenko

Aug 30, 2026, 3:07 PM

The sunflowers of Ilovaisk and the Jews and Israelis who died defending Ukraine

The sunflowers of Ilovaisk and the Jews and Israelis who died defending Ukraine. The image was created using AI.

On August 29, Ukraine remembers those who gave their lives defending the country’s independence and territorial integrity. For Israelis, the emotional meaning of such a day needs a little explanation. It is not the Ukrainian equivalent of Yom HaZikaron —...

Aug 27, 2026, 5:52 AM

Blessings, Curses, and the Hope of Elul

My association with this week’s Parashat Ki Tavo has always centered on the “wandering Aramean”—arami oved avi—about whom I have written elsewhere. The phrase appears in the declaration that accompanies the first fruits: ve-hayah ki tavo el-ha-aretz—“When you enter...

Menachem Elyah Paull

Aug 21, 2026, 6:02 PM

Why I Am Leaving Montreal at 70 · עוזב בגיל שבעים

The Erasure Aliyah at Seventy — Post One of Three Menachem Elyah Paull Nine months ago I asked an editor in Jerusalem to erase me. She did it in two days. Two days. I have waited longer than that for a plumber. I have...

Walter Estever Gonzalez

Aug 20, 2026, 6:50 AM

The Mountain That Refused the War

AI-generated illustration inspired by the slopes of Chaparrastique volcano in El Salvador.

People often ask me what I remember most about growing up during El Salvador's civil war. They expect stories about soldiers, explosions, fear, or death. Those memories exist, but they are not the first ones that come to me....

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