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From ‘how to’ to ‘why bother?’: Michael Strassfeld writes a new guide to being Jewish
(JTA) — “What the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember.” That’s known as Hansen’s Law, named for the historian Marcus Lee Hansen, who observed that while the children of immigrants tend to run away from their ethnicity in order to join the mainstream, the third generation often wants to learn the “old ways” of their grandparents.
In 1973, “The Jewish Catalog” turned Hansen’s Law into a “do-it-yourself kit” for young Jews who wanted to practice the traditions of their grandparents but weren’t exactly sure how. Imagine “The Joy of Cooking,” but instead of recipes the guide to Jewish living had friendly instructions for hosting Shabbat, building a sukkah and taking part in Jewish rituals from birth to death. Co-edited by Michael Strassfeld, Sharon Strassfeld and the late Richard Siegel, it went on to sell 300,000 copies and remains in print today.
Fifty years later, Rabbi Michael Strassfeld has written a new book that he calls a “bookend” to “The Jewish Catalog.” If the first book is a Jewish “how to,” the latest asks, he says, “why bother?” “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century” asserts that an open society and egalitarian ethics leave most Jews skeptical of the rituals and beliefs of Jewish tradition. In the face of this resistance, he argues that the purpose of Judaism is not obedience to Torah and its rituals for their own sake or mere “continuity,” but to “encourage and remind us to strive to live a life of compassion, loving relationships, and devotion to our ideals.”
Strassfeld, 73, grew up in an Orthodox home in Boston and got his master’s degree in Jewish studies at Brandeis University. Coming to doubt the “faith claims” of Orthodoxy, he became a regular at nearby Havurat Shalom, an “intentional community” that pioneered the havurah movement’s liberal, hands-on approach to traditional practice. He earned rabbinical ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College when he was 41 and went on to serve as the rabbi of Congregation Ansche Chesed on the Upper West Side and later the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the Manhattan flagship of Reconstructionist Judaism.
“To be disrupted is to experience a break with the past and simultaneously reconnect in a new way to that past,” writes Strassfeld, who retired from the pulpit in 2015. This week, we spoke about why people might find Jewish ritual empty, how he thinks Jewish practices can enrich their lives and how Passover — which begins Wednesday night — could be the key to unlocking the central idea of Judaism.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: I wanted to start with the 50th anniversary of the “Jewish Catalog.” What connects the new book with the work you did back then on the “Catalog,” which was a do-it-yourself guide for Jews who were trying to reclaim the stuff they either did or didn’t learn in Hebrew school?
Michael Strassfeld: I see them as bookends. Basically, I keep on writing the same book over and over again. [Laughs] Except no, I’m different and the world is different. I’m always trying to make Judaism accessible to people. In the “Catalog” I was providing the resources on how to live a Jewish life when the resources weren’t easily accessible.
The new book is less about “how to” than “why bother?” That’s the challenge. I think a lot of people take pride in being Jewish, but it’s a small part of their identity because it doesn’t feel relevant. I want to say to people like that that Judaism is about living a life with meaning and purpose. It’s not about doing what I call the “Jewishly Jewish” things, like keeping kosher and going to synagogue. Judaism is wisdom and practices to live life with meaning and purpose. The purpose of Judaism isn’t to be a good Jew, despite all the surveys that give you 10 points for, you know, lighting Shabbat candles. It’s about being a good person.
So that brings up your relationship to the commandments and mitzvot, the traditional acts and behaviors that an Orthodox Jew or a committed Conservative Jew feels commanded to do, from prayer to keeping kosher to observing the Sabbath and the holidays. They might argue that doing these things is what makes you Jewish, but you’re arguing something different. If someone doesn’t feel bound by these obligations, why do them at all?
I don’t have the faith or beliefs that underlie such an attitude [of obligation]. Halacha, or Jewish law, is not in reality law. It’s really unlike American law where you know that if you’re violating it, you could be prosecuted. What I’m trying to do in the book is reframe rituals as an awareness practice, that is, bringing awareness to various aspects of our lives. So it could be paying attention to food, or cultivating attitudes of gratitude, or generosity, or satisfaction. My broad understanding of the festival cycle, for example, is that you can focus on those attitudes all year long, but the festivals provide a period of time once in the year to really focus on, in the case of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, for example, saying sorry and repairing relationships.
In “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century,” Michael Strassfeld argues that the challenge of each generation’s Jews is to create the Judaism that is needed in their time. (Ben Yehuda Press)
Passover is coming. Probably no holiday asks its practitioners to do so much stuff in preparation, from cleaning the house of every trace of unleavened food to hosting, in many homes, two different catered seminars on Jewish history. Describe how Passover cultivates awareness, especially of the idea of freedom, which plays an important part thematically in your boo
The Sefat Emet [a 19th-century Hasidic master] says Torah is all about one thing: freedom. But there’s a variety of obstacles in the way. There are temptations. There’s the inner issues that you struggle with, and the bad things that are out of your control. The Sefat Emet says the 613 commandments are 613 etzot, or advice, that teach us how to live a life of freedom. The focus of Passover is trying to free yourself from the chains of the things that hold you back from being the person that you could be, not getting caught up in materiality or envy, free from unnecessary anxieties — all these things that distract us or keep us from being who we could be.
The Passover seder is one of the great rituals of Judaism. We’re trying to do a very ambitious thing by saying, not, like, “let’s remember when our ancestors were freed from Egypt,” but rather that we were slaves in Egypt and we went free. And at the seder we actually ingest that. We experience the bitterness by eating maror, the bitter herb. We experience the freedom by drinking wine. We don’t want it just to be an intellectual exercise.
Unfortunately the seder has become rote. But Passover is about this huge theme of freedom that is central to Judaism.
I think some people bristle against ritual because they find it empty. But you’re saying there’s another way to approach rituals which is to think of them as tools or instruments that can help you focus on core principles — you actually list 11 — which include finding holiness everywhere, caring for the planet and engaging in social justice, to name a few. But that invites the criticism, which I think was also leveled at the “Catalog,” that Judaism shouldn’t be instrumental, because if you treat it as a means to an end that’s self-serving and individualistic.
Certainly rituals are tools, but tools in the best sense of the word. They help us pay attention to things in our lives and things in the world that need repair. And people use them not to get ahead in the world, but because they want to be a somewhat better person. I talk a lot these days about having a brief morning practice, and in the book I write about the mezuzah. For most Jews it’s become wallpaper, but what if you take the moment that you leave in the morning, and there’s a transition from home to the outside and to work perhaps, and take a moment at the doorpost to spiritually frame your day? What are the major principles that you want to keep in your mind when you know you’re gonna be stuck in traffic or a difficult meeting?
And a lot of traditional rituals are instrumental. Saying a blessing before you eat is a gratitude practice.
But why do I need a particular Jewish ritual or practice to help me feel gratitude or order my day? Aren’t there other traditions I can use to accomplish the same things?
Anybody who is a pluralist, which I am, knows that the Jewish way is not the only way. If I grew up in India or Indonesia and my parents were locals I probably wouldn’t be a rabbi and writing these books.
But a partial answer to your question is that Judaism is one of the oldest wisdom traditions in the world, and that there has been a 3,000-year conversation by the Jewish people about what it means to live in this tradition and to live in the world. And so I think there’s a lot of wisdom there.
So much in Jewish tradition says boundaries are good, and that it’s important to draw distinctions between what’s Jewish behavior and what’s not Jewish behavior, between the holy and the mundane, and that making those distinctions is a value in itself. But you argue strongly in an early chapter that that kind of binary thinking is not Judaism as you see it.
Underlying the book is the notion that Rabbinic Judaism carried the Jewish people for 2,000 years or so. But we’re living in a very different context, and the binaries, the dualities — too often they lead to hierarchy, so that, for example, men matter more than women in Jewish life. And we’ve tried to change that. We are living in an open society where we want to be more inclusive, not less inclusive. We don’t want to live in ghettos. Now, the ultra-Orthodox say, “No, we realize the danger of trying to live like that. We don’t think there’s anything of value in that modern world. And it’s all to be rejected.” And it would be foolish not to admit that in this very open world the Jews, as a minority, could kind of disappear. But I think that Judaism has so much value and wisdom and practices to offer to people that Judaism will continue to be part of the fabric of this world — the way, for example, we have given Shabbat as a concept to the world.
You know, in the first 11 chapters of the Torah, there are no Jews. So clearly, Jews and Judaism are not essential for the world to exist. And that’s a good, humbling message.
OK, but one could argue that while Jews aren’t necessary for the world to exist, Judaism is necessary for Jews to exist. And you write in your book, “If the Jewish people is to be a people, we need to have a commonly held tradition.” I think the pushback to the kind of openness and permeability you describe is that Jews can be so open and so permeable that they just fall through the holes.
It certainly is a possibility. And it’s also a possibility that the only Jews who will be around will be ultra-Orthodox Jews.
But if Judaism can only survive by being separatist, then I question whether it’s really worthwhile. That becomes a distorted vision of Judaism, and withdrawing is not what it’s meant to be. I think we’re meant to be in the world.
Your book is called “Judaism Disrupted.” What is disruptive about the Judaism that you’re proposing?
I meant it in two ways. First, Judaism is being disrupted by this very different world we’re living in. The contents of the ocean we swim in is very different than in the Middle Ages. But I’m also using it to say that Judaism is meant to disrupt our lives in a positive way, which is to say, “Wake up, pay attention.” You are here to live a life of meaning and purpose, and to continue as co-creators with God of the universe. You’re here to make the world better, to be kind and compassionate to people, to work on yourself. In my mind it is a shofar, “Wake up, sleepers, from your sleep!” “Judaism Disrupted” says you have to pay attention to issues like food, and justice, and teshuva [repentance].
You were ordained as a Reconstructionist rabbi. Do you think your book falls neatly into any of our current denominational categories?
[Reconstructionist founder] Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s notion of Judaism as an evolving religious civilization is the one that I feel closest to. But I feel that the denominational structure isn’t particularly useful anymore. There’s basically two categories, Orthodox and the various kinds of liberal Judaism, within a spectrum. The modern world is so fundamentally different in its relationship to Jews and Judaism that what we’re seeing is a variety of attempts to figure out how to respond. And that will then become the Judaism for the next millennium. It’s time for a lot of experimentation. I think that’s required and out of that will come a new “Minhag America,” to use Isaac Mayer Wise’s phrase for the emerging custom of American Jews [Wise was a Reform rabbi in the late 19th century]. And we don’t need to have everybody doing it one way. As long as people feel committed to Judaism, the Jewish tradition, even if they’re doing it very differently than the Jews of the past, they will be writing themselves into the conversation.
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The post From ‘how to’ to ‘why bother?’: Michael Strassfeld writes a new guide to being Jewish appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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The Art of the Heart: A Message From Israel for Valentine’s Day
As Valentine’s Day, celebrated on Feb. 14, approaches, preparations are seen underway in the markets in ghodbander road, Thane, on Feb. 12, 2026, in Mumbai, India. Photo: Praful Gangurde/Hindustan Times/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
In the weeks before Valentine’s Day, hearts appear on everything: cards, shop windows, menus, and messages. It’s sweet and familiar. We use the heart as a symbol for love because it’s the body’s center for the emotion of love.
The heart is not just a Valentine’s Day symbol, however. It’s an organ that works without stopping, and it responds, quietly and powerfully, to the way we live — how and what we eat, how much stress we carry, how well we sleep, how often we move, and whether we feel connected or alone.
I came to Israel from Los Angeles in 1983 with a mission that has guided me ever since: “Healing Ourselves; Healing the Planet.” A few years later I founded what became Reidman College, beginning with a small school for holistic massage. Back then, my belief was simple: When you touch someone, you touch their soul. Done with care and respect, touch can ease pain in the body, and it can also soften something deeper: the constant bracing that so many people carry without even noticing.
What I’ve seen through the clinical training our students provide across Israel is that people don’t arrive with only a physical complaint. They arrive with a full life behind the symptom. The body is not separate from the person. The heart is not separate from the story.
That is why Valentine’s Day can be more than a commercial holiday. It can be a useful mirror. Not because everyone needs romance, but because everyone needs and wants love in the wider sense: connection, belonging, steadiness, and the feeling that I am not carrying everything alone.
Heartbreak is not just the aching heart in a Country Western song. The emotions of prolonged stress, grief, anxiety, and loneliness often show up physically in the heart. A tight chest. Shallow breathing. Poor sleep. A nervous system that never truly calms down.
When stress becomes chronic, the body behaves as if danger is always close. That affects how we breathe, how we digest, how we rest, and how we make decisions. We reach for quick comfort because the system is asking for relief. Over time, those patterns shape the habits that can protect or damage heart health: movement, sleep, food choices, emotional regulation, and the ability to recover after difficult days.
In integrative medicine, we know that changing only one habit doesn’t solve everything. We also don’t separate a person into compartments — heart here, mind there, life somewhere else. At Reidman, we teach that real care is both responsible and grounded, and that integrative approaches work best; that is, conventional medicine alongside Natural Medicine, and not instead of it. If someone has symptoms that worry them, whether that be chest pain, shortness of breath, dizziness, unusual fatigue, or unusual palpitations, they should get checked. Only with a clear diagnosis can one then begin to take the right path toward better health.
For many people, the most meaningful change for better heart health begins with a question: What does my heart need from my daily life right now?
Usually, the answer is not dramatic. It starts with the nervous system. Many adults live in a state of constant tension — shoulders lifted, jaw tight, breath held, like we are bracing for impact. You don’t have to change your whole life to change that message. Even a small daily practice of slowing the breath, especially lengthening the exhale, can help the body come down from alert mode. I’ve seen again and again in our teaching clinics: When the breath settles, the person settles. And when the person settles, the heart doesn’t have to work as hard just to keep them emotionally afloat.
Then there is movement. A short walk most days is one of the simplest ways to support circulation, mood, and sleep. It also gives stress a place to go. So many people are trying to “think” their way out of tension. But the body often needs a physical release. A 10-minute walk after a meal, a few minutes in fresh air, small things, repeated, can shift the baseline.
Sleep matters more than people like to admit. When sleep is poor, everything becomes louder: worry, cravings, irritability, sensitivity. A tired nervous system is fragile. A rested one is resilient. The heart is part of that story. If Valentine’s Day is a time for gifts, then let this message be a gift to you: Protect your evenings from constant stimulation. Create a softer landing. Less screen. Lower light. A warm shower. A few quiet minutes before bed because your body repairs itself at night and your heart benefits when you respect that repair.
And then there is the most overlooked “heart health” factor of all: connection.
Love is not only romance. Love is the person who checks in. The friend who answers. The community that makes space for you and perhaps having a pet. It is known that people with pets to care for and receive love from live longer and happier than most others. Dogs, in particular, are renowned for giving unconditional love.
Valentine’s Day can unintentionally reflect to single people, widows and widowers, the divorced, the grieving, and the lonely that they are “outside” the story. But the heart doesn’t only respond to couple-hood. The heart responds to belonging. To the feeling that you matter to someone, and someone matters to you.
If you want a simple Valentine’s practice that is actually meaningful, it’s this: Reach out in a real way. Not a reaction emoji. Not a forwarded video. A sentence that carries warmth. “How are you, really?” “I’m thinking of you.” “Do you want to take a walk together?” It sounds small, but small acts of connection are often what keep people steady.
Judaism understands something essential here: We are not meant to live as isolated individuals. We are built for community. Even the rhythm of Shabbat — pausing, disconnecting from constant doing, returning to family and to presence, is, in its own way, a heart practice. It reminds the body that life is not only pressure. There is also rest. There is also meaning. There is also relationship.
And there is touch, appropriate, respectful touch, which is increasingly missing in modern life. We live in a world that is both touch-starved and touch-confused. But the body still needs safe contact: a hug that is asked for, not taken; a hand held; a massage given with dignity. This is one reason I began in massage all those years ago. Because when touch is done properly, it can communicate something words often can’t: “You are safe, you are seen, you are not alone, and I am here with you.”
At Reidman, we speak a lot about dignity. And that includes the way we treat ourselves. Many people live at emergency speed. The heart doesn’t respond well to constant stress. It responds to steadiness. To daily care. To a life that is livable.
So yes, enjoy Valentine’s Day. Enjoy the sweetness. Send the heart emoji, send the flowers, book that romantic dinner.
But if you want the holiday to mean something deeper, let it be a reminder that your real heart is listening to your life. This month, give it more than a symbol. Give it calmer breathing, steadier sleep, gentle movement, and real connection — because love is not only what we celebrate. Love is also what we practice. Love is the most powerful healer of all. Loving ourselves; and loving others. Perhaps the Beatles were right: “All we need is love, love. Love is all we need.”
Sally Reidman, who immigrated to Israel in 1983 from Los Angeles, is the founder of Reidman College, Israel’s largest institute for complementary and integrative medicine.
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Israel’s bobsled team is chasing more than medals in its first Olympic outing in Milan
(JTA) — No matter what happens when Israel’s bobsled team hits the ice next week at the 2026 Winter Olympics, team captain Adam “AJ” Edelman has already had a year for the history books.
The 34-year-old Brookline, Massachusetts, native is the first Orthodox Jewish athlete to compete at the Winter Olympics, and now the first Israeli to qualify for the Games in two sports. He placed 28th in skeleton at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.
But for Edelman, the 12-year journey that culminated in Israel’s first-ever Olympic bobsled appearance — which he has nicknamed “Shul Runnings,” a spin on the 1993 movie about Jamaica’s bobsled team — is about more than success on the track.
“The Olympics were never a goal,” Edelman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview prior to the Games. “The Olympics were the tool, or the stepping stone, to get to the goal, which was to fundamentally redefine, or change, how our community — both the Israeli and the Jewish one — view investment into and the role of sport.”
Edelman’s journey began in 2013, when Israel attempted to recruit him to play for its national hockey team. Hockey had been Edelman’s first sport, which he played through college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was the first Shabbat-observant player in program history.
Edelman discussed the idea with the long-time alumni director of his Jewish day school, Brookline’s Maimonides School. Mike Rosenberg pointed something out to Edelman that ultimately sparked a calling.
“AJ, no one from this school has ever gotten to the level of sport beyond high school that you’ve gotten to that didn’t go to, let’s say, [Yeshiva University] or Brandeis,” Edelman recalls Rosenberg, who died last year, telling him about the two historically Jewish colleges.
Edelman couldn’t believe that. Out of thousands of Maimonides alumni (including his older brother, Emmy award-winning comedian Alex Edelman), only Edelman — who called himself “not a very gifted athlete” — had reached that level? He had a theory as to why that might be.
“I came to the conclusion that it had to be a self-selection process,” Edelman explained. “That people were selecting out of sport as a journey before they got to that level. And why were they doing it? Because there was no priority placed on sport. It wasn’t something people in our community aspired to do or invest in.”
Edelman said the lack of investment in sports led to a lack of infrastructure and a dearth of role models for Jewish kids to look up to. He set out to change that — to “be the change.”
“The only way to do that was a certificate, so to speak, of excellence in sport, and that’s the Games,” he said. “The Games are essentially the certificate of, ‘you did something.’ So in that way, the Olympics became very, very much the tool for which I wanted to make the change.”
Edelman began training in skeleton after graduating from MIT in 2014. His initial scouting report was not promising: he was told he was “not athletic, would never make the Olympics, and would never be competitive in sliding sport.”
That did not deter him. Edelman moved to Israel in 2016, where he kept training, teaching himself the sport on YouTube when he couldn’t afford a coach. He ultimately clinched Israel’s first sliding sport Olympic appearance in 2018.
Then the pandemic hit. Edelman was pursuing an MBA at Yale University when classes were suspended. Edelman was visiting Jordana Balsam, a close friend who is an attorney in New York City, when the Olympics came up.
“He was telling me about his history with skeleton, and how he competed in the 2018 Games, and how he was actually really intrigued by bobsled,” Balsam recalled. “And in an offhand comment, I’m like, ‘Well, why don’t you pursue that, since you have this time off from Yale?’ And I guess something clicked in his brain, where he was just like, ‘Yes, I’m gonna do that.’ And the rest is history.”
Edelman began working toward bringing Israel to the Olympics in bobsled. Again, there were hurdles. He had to recruit a team from scratch. Israel’s own athletic authorities were skeptical — its Olympic committee almost didn’t accept an invitation to the 2026 Games. Funding was practically non-existent. Still, the team continued training, ultimately missing out on Olympic qualification for the 2022 Games by 0.1 second.
Then came Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent Gaza war, in which five members of the team were called into combat and multiple team sponsors backed out. Still, Edelman kept his eye trained on the 2026 Games. He used Instagram DMs to recruit a new team — most of whom play other sports and had never been in a bobsled — which also features Israel’s first Druze Olympian, Ward Farwasy.
Israel ultimately qualified in late January at an event in Lake Placid, the same location where Edelman had been told 12 years ago that he’d never make it. The team often trains there, as well as in Park City, Utah, British Columbia and elsewhere. Edelman said he is rarely in the same place for more than a few weeks at a time.
“Once he had something in his head — an idea, a concept, a goal that he has — he dives into it 200%, and it’s something that I admire greatly,” Balsam said. “I’ve never seen anyone so dedicated to their craft, to their sport, to their goal. It really is inspirational.”
But even qualifying for the Games didn’t end the obstacles. Due to Olympic security, Edelman said his team’s training time in Cortina was limited. Then the team’s apartment in the Czech Republic, where they were training prior to leaving for Italy, was robbed on Feb. 7. Edelman said thousands of dollars in personal belongings, including passports, were stolen.
Throughout the process, Edelman said the wave of support, particularly from American Jews, has been “pleasantly surprising” — especially compared to the reaction after he qualified in 2018, which he called more of a “blip.”
That support has manifested through donations and merchandise sales, with Edelman fundraising to support the team’s Olympic costs. There has also been ample news and social media coverage, inside the Jewish and Israeli communities and out. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has given the team a shoutout, too.
Edelman said the positive response has been all the validation he needed.
“There was a constant question of, at the end of the road, you’re doing this for a reason, right?” he said. “ And the only reason to do this is for the goal, the goal of making a change. Of people caring about sport. Of being the change. So if the change doesn’t come and it doesn’t make an impact, then all of it is irrelevant… I think that, from what we’ve seen in the last [several weeks], the answer is an unequivocal yes. It was 100% worth it.”
In Israel, sports fans are proud of the historic nature of the bobsled team’s Olympic appearance, but the story has not broken through to the same extent, according to David Wiseman, who lives in Jerusalem and runs the popular “Follow Team Israel” Facebook page that tracks Israeli sports.
“The media are very football [soccer] and basketball-centric, so they get all the headlines,” Wiseman said. “Someone like Deni Avdija gets significantly more coverage. They know of him being the first Israeli to play in the [NBA] All-Star game far more so than this. They think it’s cool that [Edelman] made it, but they don’t devote any more thought to it. Independent of Israel, bobsled is a niche, niche sport.”
Still, Edelman and some of his supporters have seized on the narrative draw of Israel’s underdog bobsled story — not to mention the apartment break-in and other obstacles — to amplify an almost muscular form of pro-Israel advocacy. Edelman commonly uses the phrase “victors, not victims,” in reference to his team and to Israel’s spirit more broadly.
Jared Firestone, who is representing Israel in skeleton in Italy, said there was “no chance I’d be here without AJ’s guidance.” Edelman helped coach Firestone in skeleton after he made aliyah in 2019, and the pair co-founded the nonprofit Advancing Jewish Athletes to support other Jews in sports.
“I think it means so much to Israelis and to the Jewish community at large to see, with a little investment, how much can be accomplished,” Firestone said. “Unfortunately for me and AJ, we’ve had to dedicate so much of our time that could’ve gone to training and progressing on the ice to fundraising, but hopefully we’ll be inspiring people who could help to create that infrastructure so the next AJ and Jared could just focus on sport and being even better than we are.”
Balsam, who also serves as a director of Advancing Jewish Athletes, said it’s hard to articulate how meaningful Edelman’s achievement of making the Olympics is to him, and to her.
“AJ has been very, very passionate about trying to cultivate the idea that sports can be a career path for Jewish kids,” she said. “He wanted to make it to the Olympics. He wanted to show that this is possible. So for him to combine both of his passions and achieve his dream, I think is something that he can’t put into words, that I can’t put into words, but it’s just immense pride.”
Now comes the actual tournament. Israel will compete in the two-man races on Feb. 16 and 17 and in four-man on Feb. 21 and 22, with Edelman piloting the sleds. His Shiba Inu Lulu, the team’s mascot, is staying with Balsam in New York, where they’ll be cheering him on.
But no matter where Israel places, Edelman has one more box to check to fully accomplish his mission to change Israeli sports.
“There is one thing that I wish beyond anything, and it’s that I’m not the only one to do it,” he said. “ What I really wanted to accomplish through it was that someone else saw it and decided to do it themselves. That they saw that pathway opened by someone who was less than stellar, who was not, like, a God-gifted athlete, and went, ‘You know what? I’m pretty good at what I do. I can do that.’
“You have to leave it better than you found it, and it has to be for a purpose, and that purpose is always going to be to inspire someone to do it better than you did.”
The post Israel’s bobsled team is chasing more than medals in its first Olympic outing in Milan appeared first on The Forward.
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Debate over the Blue Square Super Bowl ad is fading. The racist responses from my fellow Jews will be felt longer.
(JTA) — Days after the Super Bowl, I am still reeling from how a moment designed to confront antisemitism — a 30-second ad from Robert Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance — shined a light on the hate within some corners of our own community.
The ad spurred debate over its effectiveness — a worthy conversation. But what immediately struck me was how quickly and prominently anti-Black responses played a role. I realized once again that American Jews are not only experiencing hate but must confront it within our own ranks as well. As a community, we will not succeed in combating antisemitism if we allow anti-blackness to live within our movements.
The ad, called “Sticky Note,” featured a non-Jewish Black child showing kindness to a Jewish child who was the victim of antisemitic bullying.
It spurred legitimate criticism about how to best fight antisemitism. But layered throughout was casual racism cloaked in the language of Jewish advocacy — even glee in an opportunity to engage in anti-Blackness under the guise of combating antisemitism.
Online, one person dedicated time to remaking the ad with AI so the bullies were darker-skinned and then had the Jewish child attack them.
Another person wrote that the bullies in the ad needed to be recast, because “most of our enemies aren’t white.”
Some exotified the Black child and leered at his natural hair, his height, his walk and his apparent “coolness.” People wrongfully claimed that the scenario was entirely unrealistic because Black people — at the individual or the organizational level — never stand against antisemitism.
Even more bizarrely, others claimed that the ad was somehow a tacit endorsement of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“There is a very casual and thoughtless ‘why the hell was a Black person shown being nice to a Jew, how dare they’ view being expressed here, and it’s not right,” tweeted Ben Badejo, who is both Black and Jewish.
“I am not asking Jews on X to like Kraft’s ad,” he added. “But I am definitely asking Jews on X to stop saying that a black person would never befriend a Jew and that it was wrong for the ad to depict this.”
Indeed, the downright racist responses from some parts of our community hurt Jews, our allies in Black communities, and the fight against antisemitism at a moment when the stakes couldn’t be higher. They highlight just how much work remains in fighting our own anti-Black racism.
None of the critics who were so furious about the inclusion of a Black child acknowledged a basic fact: There are hundreds of thousands of Jews of Color in the United States. The child in the ad — who approaches the Jewish protagonist and says he has experienced hatred too — could easily be Jewish himself, or have Jewish family members. Yes, his name is later revealed to be Bilal, but names do not always reliably map onto religious, racial or ethnic identity.
And that matters.
I know because I feel it personally. I am married to a Jew of Color, and we have two Black Jewish kids.
The claim that it is impossible, outrageous or ideologically suspect to depict Black people as allies in the fight against antisemitism does something deeply harmful: It erases the existence of Black Jews. That erasure is itself both antisemitic and racist. You cannot claim to defend the Jewish community while denying the reality of over 200,000 Black Jews in America. That number will only grow. Those numbers come from a 2020 Pew survey — my youngest wasn’t born yet.
You cannot fight antisemitism while actively and purposefully hurting Jewish kids — including my kids.
The claim also erases important alliances with members of the non-Jewish Black community.
In both my professional and personal life, I have experienced profound moments of solidarity and kindness in the fight against antisemitism from non-Jewish Black Americans. As director of Advocacy for One Mitzvah A Day, a project of Jewish Federations of North America that mobilizes communal gratitude to those who support us, I witness daily acts of courage and moral clarity from people of all backgrounds who choose to stand against antisemitism. Through our daily texts highlighting these moments of solidarity, our subscribers have sent more than 1.5 million messages of gratitude. We have thanked artists, elected officials, government leaders, and civil rights activists — many of them Black — who have spoken out loudly against antisemitism and stood with the Jewish community. To remain silent in the face of racism would be a betrayal of the kindness, solidarity, and moral leadership they have shown.
I felt compelled to post something on X on Sunday to push back against the racism I was seeing online: “You’re not making Jews safer. You’re hurting Jews. You’re not fighting antisemitism — you are hurting your community.” The backlash was swift and predictable. The rage didn’t stop at disagreement — it turned personal, aimed at me and at anyone who pointed out that being racist does nothing to combat antisemitism in American society. Within hours, I was branded an enemy of Israel, a self-hater, an apologist, and accused of being paid to tweet.
It’s important to emphasize: Debate is core to Jewish culture – it has kept us a strong, vibrant community for over 3,000 years. Debates about this 30-second spot are happening around Shabbat dinners, shul lunches and friendly coffees. All of this is fair game, healthy even. Criticize the ad. Debate Jewish professionals and how we are fighting antisemitism. It’s our job to serve the community. But hatred is not a productive form of debate. I know these spaces intimately. I’ve been a full-time Jewish professional since 2019 and have been active in Jewish advocacy long before that. As the mother of Black children and wife to a Black Jew, my commitment to normalizing Jewish life as multiracial is non-negotiable.
Still, I mostly responded with humor. When you’ve walked these lines long enough, none of it is surprising.
That, perhaps, is the saddest part of all.
How completely predictable it was.
The Super Bowl is over, and the controversy around the ad will soon fade, replaced by the next hot topic. But the effects of the racist posts are forever and leave an ugly, enduring stain that harms us all.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
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