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On one foot: Five essential things to know about Abraham Joshua Heschel on his 50th yahrzeit
(JTA) — Last week marked the 50th yahrzeit — or Hebrew anniversary — of the death of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), the theologian, scholar, philosopher, Holocaust survivor and modern-day prophet who was long associated with the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary but whose embrace of “radical amazement” wasn’t contained by any movement or denomination. Monday is also Martin Luther King Jr. Day: The rabbi and the minister have often been linked thanks to Heschel’s civil rights activism and iconic photographs of them in the front lines of the march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery on March 21, 1965. (See below for events tied to the legacies of both men.)
I confess that Heschel’s lavish, epigrammatic prose and devotion to the living reality of God didn’t speak to a buttoned-down skeptic like me. I might quote his book “The Sabbath,” a lovely articulation of how Shabbat forms an island in time, but I’m more comfortable discussing Heschel’s political views, like his opposition to the Vietnam War, than his ideas on God and humankind.
I suspect others are similarly intimidated by Heschel, and could use a gentle onramp. For help I turned to Rabbi Shai Held, author of “Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence” (2015) and the president and dean at Hadar, the nondenominational yeshiva. I challenged Held to name five works, articles, films or other media that would help people appreciate who Heschel was and why he remains celebrated.
“I fell in love with Heschel as as a teenager, because I felt he both articulated intuitions about the world that I had but didn’t remotely have language for, and he also was the first person I had heard articulate a vision of what Judaism thought that the good life could look like,” Held told me. “As a day school grad I felt I knew a lot of stuff about Judaism, but if you asked me ‘what is Judaism about and what is it for,’ I would have had no idea what to say. And Heschel gave me that narrative. It was a story that spoke to my mind and my heart at the same time. It was like asking me to become something in the world and that was incredibly moving to me.”
Here are five great ways to access Heschel, with comments by Rabbi Held. I plan to make this an ongoing series of introductions to Jewish thinkers, writers and artists who are making news or are particularly relevant to the current Jewish conversation. If there is someone you’d like to see discussed, drop me a line at asc@jewishweek.org.
(For Rabbi Held’s own introduction to Heschel, see his video, “Why Amazement Matters.”)
“The Sabbath,” (1951)
(In this slim volume, Heschel describes the Sabbath as a “palace in time,” and an opportunity for spiritual communion with the potential to help shape how its observers live the other six days of the week.)
“The number of people I have met in my travels, who tell me about how that book opened them up to spirituality, is staggering. Two things about that book are very moving. One is, at a time when American Judaism was about integration and success, Heschel launched this dramatic insistence that Judaism was about the life of the spirit. I think it landed like a bomb for a lot of American Jews. It was totally revolutionary to them. One of the ways that the book has resonated and continues to resonate is that Heschel is rebelling against a culture of technology, and wants to place a stake in the ground for the value of appreciation and gratitude. One of my favorite sentences in all of Heschel is that ‘Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation.’ That line is from ‘God in Search of Man,’ but I think ‘The Sabbath’ is about Shabbat as a practice of appreciation.
“I also think that people had internalized the Christian, anti-Jewish idea that Christianity was about inwardness and spirituality and Judaism wasn’t. Heschel responds: We gave the world the gift of Sabbath which is about living in the presence of God.”
“God in Search of Man,” part 1 (1955)
(Held calls Heschel’s companion volume to his earlier work “Man Is Not Alone” a “beautiful evocation of what wonder and gratitude look like.”)
“This is Heschel as a phenomenologist: What is it like to have a sense that our lives are not something that we earned and that part of the religious life is to repay this extraordinary gift? He needs to write in a poetic mode, in part, because he’s trying to evoke in his readers a sense of gratitude, a sense of indebtedness, a sense of obligation. What I tried to do in my book is to [delete] sort of argue that amidst all that poetry, there’s an argument: Wonder is what opens the door to obligation. Wonder is about reawakening a sense that all of us, just by the nature of being human, have an intuition that we’re obligated to something and someone.”
“The Prophets,” 1962
(Heschel provides compact profiles of seven biblical prophets and attempts to understand the phenomenon of prophecy in general. Held recommends starting with the chapter titled, “The Theology of Pathos.”)
“Heschel makes the most eloquent case I think any Jew has ever made since the prophets for a God who cares, a God who is stirred to the core of God’s being by human suffering and especially human suffering that stems from oppression. It’s Heschel’s attempt to reclaim the God of the Bible from what he saw as the ravages of abstract philosophy that reduces God to an idea. God is not an idea. God is someone who cares about us. God has a name. There’s this amazing speech he gives to Jewish educators somewhere where he says, ‘I was invited to a conference to talk about my idea of God and I responded to them and said, ‘I don’t have an idea of God, I have God’ — Hakadosh baruch hu [the Holy one, blessed be God] who makes a claim on my life.”
“Religion and Race,” 1963
(On Jan. 14, 1963, Heschel gave the speech “Religion and Race” at a conference of the same name in Chicago, where he became close to King.)
“First of all, you see how Heschel’s theology and his activism are so entirely interwoven: The God who loves the downtrodden, the God who loves widows and orphans, is the God who requires us to stand up and fight for civil rights. It’s also extraordinarily beautiful, in that it combines really interesting biblical interpretation with [theological depth and profound] moral passion. Part of what Heschel and King meant to each other is that each one of them saw the other as a kind of living proof that God had not abandoned the downtrodden — and King was very important to Heschel in the context of the theology of of the Shoah: Martin Luther King embodies the reality that God has not abandoned the world. He really believed Martin Luther King was channeling God, nothing less than that.”
The NBC Interview (1972)
(Shortly before he died at age 65, Heschel recorded an interview with broadcaster Carl Stern. It aired on Dec. 10, 1972, on NBC-TV as an episode of “The Eternal Light,” the long-running religion and ethics show produced in conjunction with the Jewish Theological Seminary.)
“He makes this incredibly beautiful statement about telling kids to live their life as if it were a work of art. Which is just amazing — so beautiful and so simple. And there’s also this really interesting moment where Carl Stern asks him if he’s a prophet and he says, ‘You know, I cannot accept such a compliment. I am not a prophet. I am a child of prophets. But indeed the Talmud says all Israel are the children of prophets.’ I just love that combination of humility and elevatedness. That interview [offers a powerful glimpse of him as a human being, and not just a bunch of words on a page. You see a real person]. is also what makes him actually a human being and not just a bunch of words on a page. You see a real person.”
On Monday, Jan. 16 at 7 p.m. ET, Shai Held will join Arnold Eisen, chancellor emeritus of the Jewish Theological Seminary, for a Martin Luther King Jr. Day conversation reflecting on Heschel’s life, thought and legacy. (Register here for Zoom link.) That same night, at 8 p.m. ET, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah will commemorate Heschel’s 50th yahrzeit with a discussion with his daughter, Susannah Heschel, the Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. (Register here.)
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Who can play a Jew — A debate in Germany
אױף דער בינע פֿון „דײַטשן טעאַטער“ אין בערלין טראָגט דער בלאָנדער שױשפּילער מאָריץ קינעמאַן אַ טלית. ס׳איז שװער צו זײַן אַ ייִד אין דײַטשלאַנד, גיט ער צו פֿאַרשטײן. שפּעטער שילט ער אין עולם אַרײַן מיט אױסגעשרײען פֿון „פּאַסקודנע גױים!“
מע װאָלט געקענט מײנען אַז קינעמאַן איז אַ ייִד, און אַז ער רעדט פֿאַר זיך אַלײן. ס׳איז אָבער נישט אַזוי פּשוט.
זײַן חבֿר דוד, דערציילט ער אין דער סאָלאָ־פֿאָרשטעלונג, איז אַן אַקטיאָר, נישט קיין ייִד, װאָס שפּילט גערן ייִדישע ראָלעס. ס׳איז אים אָבער שווער. „פּלוצעם װילן אַלע רעזשיסאָרן בלױז ׳עכטן׳ ייִדן!“ זאָגט ער. אײן מאָל האָט דוד אַפֿילו געבאָרגט בײַ מאָריצן זײַן יאַרמלקע כּדי צו פֿאַרבעסערן די שאַנסן צו קריגן אַזאַ ראָלע.
קינעמאַן שפּילט דאָ אַ פּאַרשױן וואָס, כאָטש ער טראָגט אַ טלית, איז נישט קײן ייִד. די פּיעסע הײסט טאַקע „פֿאַלשע ייִדן“ און זײַן פּאַרשױן איז באַשײַמפּערלעך באַזירט אױף אַ דײַטשן זשורנאַליסט אונטערן נאָמען פֿאַביאַן װאָלף.
יאָרנלאַנג האָט פֿאַביאַן װאָלף פּובליקירט פּראָװאָקאַטיװע פּאָליטישע עסײען פֿון אַ ייִדישן קוקװינקל אין אַ נאַציאָנאַלער צײַטונג – ביז זײַן לעצטן עסײ דאָרט אין 2023, װען ער האָט זיך מודה געװען אַז זײַנע מעשׂיות װעגן אַ ייִדישער באָבען זענען… פּוסטע באָבע־מעשׂיות. פֿאַביאַן װאָלף איז געװען אַזאַ מין „פֿאַלשער ייִד“, אַ װאָלף אין שאָפֿנפּעלץ, און פּונקט ווי וואָלף, האָט קינעמאַן דאָ אויך אָפּגענאַרט דעם עולם.
נאָך דער פֿאָרשטעלונג האָב איך בײַם שענק אין דער פֿאָיע פֿון טעאַטער געכאַפּט אַ שמועס מיט קינעמאַן און דעם דראַמאַטורג־רעזשיסאָר פֿון דער פּיעסע, נעם ברוזילאָװסקי. „קודם־כּל װיל איך װיסן, צי ביסטו טאַקע אַ ייִד?“ האָב איך געפֿרעגט בײַ קינעמאַן.
און איצט קלער איך, צי איז זײַן ענטפֿער װיכטיק?
ברוזילאָװסקי, װאָס איז יאָ אַ ייִד, האָט מיר דערקלערט׃ „ס׳איז מיר געװען װיכטיק צו טרעפֿן אַ בלאָנדן אַקטיאָר פֿאַר דער ראָלע. סוף־כּל־סוף האַנדלט זיך די פּיעסע נישט װעגן ייִדן, נאָר װעגן דײַטשן און זײערע נעװראָזן.“
די צוקוקערס פֿון דער פּיעסע האָבן נישט געוווּסט צי קינעמאַן איז אַ ייִד ביזן סוף. אַפֿילו דער קלאַנג־טעכניקער האָט הינטער די קוליסן געשטעלט די זעלבע פֿראַגע. קינעמאַן און ברוזילאָװסקי װילן דער עולם זאָל פֿאַרגעסן די סטערעאָטיפּן װעגן ייִדישן אױסזען און גלײבן, בשעת־מעשׂה, אַז קינעמאַן איז יאָ אַ ייִד.
צװישן זײַנע מאָנאָלאָגן האָט מען איבערגעשפּילט אױסצוגן פֿון רעקאָרדירטע אינטערװיוען װעגן די אַזױ גערופֿענע „קאָסטיום־ייִדן“. דאָס איז אַן אמתער פֿענאָמען׃ דײַטשע שאַרלאַטאַנען װאָס מאַכן זיך פֿאַר ייִדן און רעדן עפֿנטלעך װעגן דעם חורבן פֿון אַ ייִדישן קוקװינקל. פֿריִער האָבן זיי זיך געמאַכט פֿאַר לעבן געבליבענע פֿונעם חורבן, און הײַנט — װי זײערע קינדער און אײניקלעך. עטלעכע „קאָסטיום־ייִדן“ האָבן, אײדער מע האָט זײ אַנטפּלעקט, דערגרײכט גרױסע הצלחה. אײנער איז אַפֿילו געװאָרן דער ראָש פֿון אַ ייִדישער קהילה מיט הונדערט מיטגלידער.
אין אַן אינטערוויו האָט באַרבאַראַ שטײַנער, די מחברטע פֿונעם בוך„די אינסצענירונג פֿון ייִדישקײט“, געטענהט אַז קאָסטיום־ייִדן „דערגאַנצן אַ בלױז אין מאַרק“. אין אַ געזעלשאַפֿט מיט קאָלעקטיװער שולד לגבי אַ מינאָריטעט ציִען שאַרלאַטאַנען צו אַ היפּשן עולם. זײ פֿאַרשטײען גאַנץ גוט װעלכע רעפּליקן פֿאַרקױפֿן זיך.
ענלעכע פֿאַלן געפֿינט מען אין אַנדערע געזעלשאַפֿטן. אין קאַנאַדע, למשל, האָט מען אין די לעצטע יאָרן אַנטדעקט שרעקלעכע באַװײַזן פֿונעם אַמאָליקן גענאָציד אױף די אָרטיקע ערשטע אײַנגעבוירענע פֿעלקער. גלײַכצײַטיק האָט מען אַנטפּלעקט אַז דער פּרעמירטער קאַנאַדער שרײַבער טאָמאַס קינג, באַקאַנט פֿאַר זײַנע ביכער אָנגעשריבן פֿון אַ טשעראָקי־קוקװינקל, שטאַמט בכלל נישט פֿון די ערשטע פֿעלקער.
בסך־הכּל לעבן אין אַ לאַנד פֿון 83 מיליאָן מענטשן בלויז אַ 200 טױזנט ייִדן, לרובֿ אימיגראַנטן פֿון אַמאָליקן ראַטן־פֿאַרבאַנד אָדער מדינת־ישׂראל – ווי אויך אַ גרױסע צאָל גרים פֿון דײַטשן אָפּשטאַם. דער „צענטראַלער ראַט פֿון ייִדן אין דײַטשלאַנד“ פֿאַרטרעט בלױז אַרום אַ העלפֿט פֿון די ייִדן, װײַל נישט אַלע ייִדן פֿילן זיך צוגעבונדן צו דער אָפֿיציעלער ייִדישער קהילה אין זײער שטאָט. נישט געקוקט אױף דער קלײנער פּראָפּאָרץ ייִדן אין לאַנד – 0.24% – קומען זײ צו רײד בײַ כּלערלײ געזעלשאַפֿטלעכע דעבאַטעס: בפֿרט װעגן געשיכטע, װעלטפּאָליטיק און דער ראָלע פֿון אימיגראַנטן אין דײַטשלאַנד. מע קוקט אױף ייִדן װי די „גוטע, אַסימילירטע“ מינאָריטעט. להיפּוך — לױטן ראַסיסטישן נאַראַטיװ — אַסימילירן זיך קוים די מאַכמעדאַנער אימיגראַנטן און פּליטים און ברענגען מיט זיך אַן „אימפּאָרטירטן אַנטיסעמיטיזם“.
דער סאָציאָלאָג י. מיכל באָדעמאַן ז״ל און דער פּאָעט מאַקס טשאָלעק באַשרײַבן די עפֿנטלעכע דיסקוסיע װעגן ייִדן װי אַ מין מעטאַפֿאָרישן בלאָף, דעם אַזױ גערופֿענעם „אָנדענק־טעאַטער“: צו ערשט שרײַבט אַ נישט־ייִדישער דראַמאַטורג אָן דעם סצענאַר; דערנאָך קלײַבט ער אויס אַ ייִד װאָס זאָל רעדן פֿאַר אַלע ייִדן אין דײַטשלאַנד; אָט דער „רעפּרעזענטאַנט“ זאָגט אױס דעם דראַמאַטורגס רעפּליקן ווי געהעריק — און דער נישט־ייִדישער עולם אַפּלאָדירט. די מעטאַפֿאָרישע פּיעסע רעדט זיך װעגן די טױטע ייִדישע קדושים פֿון אַ מאָל, װעגן אַ נײַעם אױפֿבלי פֿון ייִדישקײט אין דײַטשלאַנד און מדינת־ישׂראל, װעגן אַנטיסעמיטיזם בײַ לינק־געשטימטע מענטשן און בײַ מאַכמעדאַנער, װעגן דײַטשן תּשובֿה טאָן און ייִדישן מוחל זײַן. אמתע ייִדן מיט אײגענע מעשׂיות אָדער מיט די „פֿאַלשע“ מײנונגען געהערן נישט אױף אַזאַ מעטאַפֿאָרישער בינע.
די שרײַבערין דבֿורה פֿעלדמאַן, באַקאַנט פֿאַר איר בוך „נישט־אָרטאָדאָקסיש“ און דער נעטפֿליקס־אַדאַפּטאַציע דערפֿון, האָט געשריבן אַ בוך אױף דײַטש מיטן טיטל „ייִדן־פֿעטיש“. לױט איר איז דער איצטיקער דײַטשער פֿילאָסעמיטיזם ענג פֿאַרבונדן מיטן אַלטן אַנטיסעמיטיזם. בײדע פֿאַרגרינגערן און פֿאַרשטומען די ייִדישע פֿילמיניקײט.
דאָס אויסטײלן ראָלעס אין טעאַטער קען זײַן פּריקרע, אַפֿילו ווען עס האָט גאָרנישט צו טאָן מיט אידענטיטעט. קינעמאַן האָט אפֿשר אַ מוסקוליעזן גוף אָבער ער זעט נישט אויס ווי קיין קינאָ־שטערן. די ראָלע־דירעקטאָרן (casting directors, בלע״ז) װײסן אָפֿט נישט װעלכע ראָלעס פּאַסן אים: איז ער אַ „נערד“ צי אַ „העלד“? „װי אַ שױשפּילער בין איך בײַ די ראָלע־אויסטײלער אין די הענט“, האָט קינעמאַן געזאָגט.
אין 2023 האָט דער אַמעריקאַנער נישט־ייִדישער אַקטיאָר־רעזשיסאָר ברעדלי קופּער, שפּילנדיק דעם דיריגענט און קאָמפּאָזיטאָר לענאַרד בערנשטײן אינעם פֿילם „מאַעסטראָ“, געטראָגן אַ פֿאַלשע „ייִדישע“ נאָז. דאָס האָט דערפֿירט צו אַ קלײנעם סקאַנדאַל, אָבער בערנשטײנס קינדער האָבן קופּערן פֿאַרטײדיקט.
ס׳איז שױן דורכױס פּסול, אַז אַ װײַסער אַקטיאָר זאָל זיך אױספֿאַרבן דאָס פּנים און שפּילן אַן אַפֿראָ־אַמעריקאַנער אױף דער בינע. אַזױ האָט געטאָן דער ייִדישער אַקטיאָר על דזשאָלסאָן (אַסאַ יאולסאָן) אין די פֿאַראײניקטע שטאַטן אין די 1910ער יאָרן אָן – און איז דעמאָלט געװאָרן אַ שטערן פֿון טעאַטער און קינאָ, דער „מלך פֿון ׳בלעקפֿײס׳“. מיט זײַנע קאָמישע פֿאָרשטעלונגען פֿון טראַדיציאָנעלע אַפֿראָ־אַמעריקאַנער לידער האָט דזשאָלסאָן, צװײ דורות נאָך דער שקלאַפֿערײַ, צעזײט און צעשפּרײט כּלערלײ ראַסיסטישע סטערעאָטיפּן.
אָבער װער מעג דען שפּילן אַ ייִד, און װער נישט? װײַטער׃ װער מעג רעדן פֿאַר די ייִדן אין דײַטשלאַנד 81 יאָר נאָכן חורבן?
אױף אָט די פֿראַגעס האָט קײנער אינעם שענק פֿון „דײַטשן טעאַטער“ געהאַט קײן קלאָרן ענטפֿער. סיר הענרי, אַ שױשפּילער בײַ דער בערלינער „פֿאָלקסבינע“, אַ געבױרענער אין קאַנאַדע, טענהט׃ „בעסער זאָלן דאָס די ייִדן דערצײלן די ייִדישע װיצן. אױף דער בינע, פֿונדעסטװעגן, װענדט זיך אַלץ אינעם קאָנטעקסט און די כּללים זענען נישט אַזױ פֿעסט.“
דער ייִדישער רעזשיסאָר ברוזילאָװסקי איז מסכּים׃ „מיר האָבן נישט קײן כּללים אין טעאַטער.“
The post Who can play a Jew — A debate in Germany appeared first on The Forward.
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Defining the Goals of the Iran War
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth holds a briefing with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, US, March 19, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Evan Vucci
Going after the unacceptable threat Iran posed to American, Israeli, Gulf Arab States, European, and Asian military and political interests — and understanding the destructive hand of China behind the mullahs — was not a mistake. It was recognition of the stakes for the civilized world.
But the US and Israel, indispensable allies at many levels, have to take account of their differences in threat level and capabilities, and forge a political as well as military path together.
Two points to make in wartime:
First — achievable goals are essential to ending a war. Corollary 1: It is easier to start a war than end one Corollary 2: Every war must end
Second — there are things you don’t know and won’t know (although in some cases, people knew, but people weren’t listening.
President Donald Trump said in his State of the Union address: “They [the Iranians] have already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.”
He was right, but dismissed with a collective snicker.
My husband, security analyst Dr. Stephen Bryen, ran the statement through Google Gemini and found disparaging references to the President in The Washington Post, The Guardian, American Progress, PBS NewsHour, PolitiFact, The New York Times and CNN, among others.
He found “experts” who told us that the range of Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal was about 2,000 km, which made Israel and the Gulf States potential targets, but allowed the Europeans to claim immunity. In 2025, a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment posited that Iran was “years away” from possessing a viable ICBM.
They were wrong.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News in February, “We are not developing long-range missiles … we have limited the range below 2,000 kilometers.”
He lied.
Trump was right. The range is closer to 4,000 km, technically putting Paris in range (about 4,200 km from Tehran).
[Aside: Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said in a TV interview that Iran had enough uranium to make nuclear bombs, but there was no reason to do anything about it because Iran’s missiles couldn’t yet reach the US. Is he still sure?]
The unwillingness to see and understand threats is, in some ways, an admirable attempt to avoid war. War is terrible. No one wants war. War may kill the enemy, and surely it will also kill innocents. But the decades-old idea that one could negotiate with terrorists is a huge failing in the Western world.
The Oslo Accords were not peace. Temporary deals with Lebanon are not peace. Multiple Gaza ceasefires were not peace. Operations Rising Lion and Midnight Hammer were not peace. The return of the Israeli hostages was not peace.
Israel collected intelligence and built an extraordinary military force in cooperation with the United States, while the US built Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPS). But it also assumed that giving the people of Gaza a decent life, including work permits in Israel, would keep things calm.
It worked at some level until October 7, 2023.
After that, Israel’s determination to defend its citizens forced a reckoning. It would no longer ignore Iran. President Trump agreed. Last summer’s attack on Iranian assets was a masterpiece of coordination and cooperation.
But it wasn’t enough.
The attacks launched this year were designed not only to eliminate Iran’s weapons and weapons-producing capability, but to put in place a new strategic pattern for behavior.
Much of the Arab world has come to his thinking. UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and even Qatar, seeing that they are targets for Iran, not allies, have stepped up. Azerbaijan, too. Syria is silent and Lebanon is trying to figure out how to get rid of Hezbollah. In Europe, the Czech Republic and Estonia defied the EU resolution on the war.
In the past few days, Japan and several European countries appear to have awakened to the fact that their future, their security, and their people are on the firing line.
The late Fred Iklé, a defense strategist and official in the Reagan administration, wrote a book entitled Every War Must End. He was writing primarily, but not only, about American wars. For Iklé, who passed away in 2011, the essential lesson was that it is much easier to start a war than to successfully conclude one. Having achievable aims — both military and political — and stopping when they have been met — is the key to success.
The alternative is to slog along with grinding casualties until the conflict peters out ignominiously when public opinion no longer supports the effort. The French, he pointed out, were the military victors in Algeria — as were the Americans in Vietnam — but in both cases, the Western power withdrew without a political victory, and public disillusionment hampered the government at home and abroad for years after.
The Russians left Afghanistan when it produced unacceptable grumbling at home. More recently, the US left Afghanistan and northern Syria.
In none of those cases was the war over; in each case, people continued to die on the ground when we went home.
But Israel is home. Israel needs victory to ensure peace — how you define that between allies is precisely the point. And America and Israel must find a definition of victory that works for each.
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly magazine.
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When a Jewish Landmark Disappears, So Does Jewish Presence
The Contemporary Jewish Museum. Photo: screenshot.
Another major Jewish institution has collapsed – and the implications reach far beyond San Francisco.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) has closed and is selling its building. What was once a bold, architecturally striking institution in the heart of downtown will soon be something else entirely. Another civic space repurposed. Another cultural anchor lost.
I loved seeing that building. Designed by Daniel Libeskind, it was bold, unmistakable, and confident – right off Yerba Buena Gardens in the heart of the city. It stood prominently, not tucked away or obscured, but fully visible. It sent a simple but powerful message: Jewish life belongs in the civic fabric. For me, it was a symbol of pride.
And now it is gone.
The explanations offered are familiar. Attendance declined by roughly 50 percent from 2019 to 2023–2024. Revenue fell. In the fiscal year ending June 2024, expenses outpaced revenue by more than $5.9 million. Leadership acknowledged that the building itself had become “beyond our capacity” to maintain.
All of that may be true. But it is not sufficient.
Institutions do not simply collapse because conditions change. They collapse because they fail to respond to changing conditions with clarity, discipline, and purpose. And when a flagship Jewish cultural institution disappears in one of the wealthiest and most philanthropic regions in the country, it is worth asking not only what happened, but what it says about us.
At one level, this is a story of institutional failure. The museum expanded into a large and expensive footprint – a 63,000-square-foot facility completed in 2008 at a cost of $47 million in a city already becoming more difficult to sustain. It relied on a fragile mix of philanthropy and foot traffic in a downtown that was hollowing out even before COVID accelerated the trend. The museum was still carrying roughly $27 million in outstanding construction debt. When those pressures intensified, there appears to have been no clear plan to right-size the institution, refocus its mission, or rethink its role in a changing cultural landscape.
Instead, the result was a slow drift toward insolvency – followed by closure.
But the deeper problem is not simply managerial. It is cultural. And it was visible in the year before the closure, when the museum found itself caught in an episode that illustrated just how far it had drifted from its core identity.
In spring 2024, the museum mounted its first major open-call exhibition of California Jewish artists. Seven of the accepted artists withdrew their work in a coordinated protest, demanding that the museum commit to BDS – the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel – and divest from all funding associated with the Jewish state. The museum rejected those demands. But rather than confidently reaffirming its identity as a Jewish cultural institution, it hesitated publicly, left blank spaces on its walls where the withdrawn works would have hung, and framed the episode as a “complicated moment.” It was a moment that revealed an institution uncertain of what it stood for.
Too many institutions in recent years have confused relevance with purpose. In an effort to remain current, they have chased trends, embraced fashionable programming, and diluted the very identity that made them distinctive. In doing so, they have weakened the case for their own existence – both to the public and to their donors.
Jewish institutions are not immune to this drift. When they lose clarity about who they are and what they are meant to do, they risk becoming interchangeable with any number of other cultural organizations. And interchangeable institutions are far easier to abandon.
The museum’s collapse also raises uncomfortable questions about the direction of Jewish giving. The Jewish Federation Bay Area manages more than $2 billion in assets and provided millions in grants in fiscal year 2023 alone. The Bay Area is home to some of the most generous Jewish philanthropists in America. If a flagship institution like this cannot be sustained in that environment, the problem is not a lack of resources. It is a question of priorities.
Much contemporary giving is directed toward causes, programs, and initiatives – often important ones. But less attention is paid to sustaining the shared institutions that give Jewish life visibility, continuity, and public meaning. Museums, cultural centers, and communal spaces do not always produce immediate or measurable outcomes. But they create something more enduring: a sense of presence.
The board chair told reporters that the building “does not define the museum.” And perhaps he is right, technically. The executive director expressed optimism about a smaller, reimagined future. That deserves acknowledgment. But what has been lost in the interim – the physical presence, the civic statement, the visibility – cannot simply be reimagined back into existence. Presence is not just programmatic. It is architectural. It is spatial. It is the fact of a building that stands in the middle of a great city and says: we are here.
Places like the Contemporary Jewish Museum did something rare. They connected past and present, insiders and outsiders, tradition and creativity. They offered a space where Jewish life could be explored without precondition – neither purely religious nor purely academic, but deeply cultural and civic at once. They were not simply museums. They were part of the infrastructure of Jewish public life.
The disappearance of such institutions is especially troubling given what is happening in the broader culture. The ADL recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in 2024, the highest level since tracking began in 1979 – a staggering 893 percent increase over the past decade. The FBI simultaneously recorded the highest number of anti-Jewish hate crimes since it began reporting data in 1991. A majority of American Jewish college students report feeling uncomfortable or unsafe on campus because they are Jewish.
At a moment like this, the disappearance of visible Jewish institutions sends precisely the wrong signal. It suggests contraction when presence is needed. It risks normalizing a quieter, less visible Jewish public life.
It is also worth noting that the CJM’s collapse is part of a wider pattern in San Francisco’s struggling cultural sector – the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, California College of the Arts, and the nearby Mexican Museum have all faced severe financial distress in recent years. This context matters. The CJM did not fail in a vacuum. But it is not exculpatory, either. What distinguishes the institutions that endure is usually not better luck. It is clearer purpose and stronger accountability.
When an institution like this collapses in a wealthy and engaged community, it is rarely because no one cared. It is because no one felt ultimately responsible for ensuring that it endured. Not the board. Not the donors. Not the broader community.
Everyone assumes someone else will step in. And no one does.
That is the accountability failure. And it is correctable – if the community chooses to correct it.
The sale of the Contemporary Jewish Museum should not be treated as a local story or an isolated failure. It is a signal, one that should prompt concrete action.
Jewish philanthropists and federations should dedicate a meaningful portion of their giving specifically to sustaining cultural institutions – not just causes and programs, but the physical and civic infrastructure of Jewish life. Boards of Jewish institutions should be held to explicit accountability for institutional survival, not just programmatic innovation. And Jewish communities in every major city should ask, right now, whether their flagship cultural institutions are financially sound – and what they would do if they were not.
If the CJM survives in some smaller, reimagined form, that would be welcome. But the larger lesson stands regardless: Jewish presence in American public life is not self-sustaining. It requires deliberate investment, disciplined governance, and a community willing to prioritize endurance over the fashions of the moment.
Some institutions are easy to replace. Others are not.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum was more than a museum. It was a statement.
And its disappearance should force us to ask whether we are still willing to make such statements – or whether, slowly and quietly, we are allowing them to disappear.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.