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The battle for Jewish hearts and minds returns to the printed page
(JTA) — The last 20 years haven’t been kind to Jewish journalism, with local weeklies shrinking or folding and even big city papers suspending their print publications and going completely digital. Publishing online has allowed these papers to cut costs and given them the potential for a wide reach — albeit a potential undermined by an increasingly siloed and ideologically polarized market for news and ideas.
Yet still there are those who aren’t giving up on print — at least in small, carefully targeted batches. This spring has seen the launch of two Jewish journals — Masorti, a reboot of the former Conservative Judaism, and Fragments, a product of the left-leaning Jewish human rights group T’ruah. The two magazines join a small but scrappy fraternity of journals aiming to steer the Jewish conversation.
“We’re the people of the book. I think print is having a moment,” said Rabbi Lev Meirowitz Nelson, who as director of Emor, T’ruah’s affiliated think tank, edits Fragments. “In the midst of all the [digital] bombardment people experience, there’s something very grounding about picking up a hard copy and being able to mark it up or carry it with you.”
Of course, Fragments and its more established cousins — from a legacy Modern Orthodox quarterly like Tradition to the interdisciplinary journal Modern Judaism — are all available online, and few print more than 1,000 copies at a time. The goal, the editors and publishers of some of the newer publications told me, is to establish a brand and repair what each one said was a broken communal discussion about Israel, domestic politics and religion.
“I hate what’s become of discourse in Jewish life, which largely goes on on Twitter and other places like that,” said Mark Charendoff. “I think Jews like longform discussions, and we’ve become very, very impatient. I wanted to carve out a space for that long type of writing and reading.”
Charendoff is president of the Maimonides Fund, which publishes Sapir, perhaps the best known of the newish journals. It has a high-profile editor — Bret Stephens, the conservative columnist on the New York Times opinion page — and a penchant for hot-button topics that rally conservatives and enrage liberals. Recent issues of the two-year-old journal have focused on “cancel culture” and a campus environment that most of its contributors consider hostile to conservatism and Jewish life.
“I think society and the Jewish community has become so polarized that people are afraid of articulating controversial views. We need to take a breath and say, ‘You’re not going to be harmed by reading something you disagree with,’” said Charendoff.
T’ruah believes there are plenty of controversial views being aired, but mostly on the right: It has explicitly positioned its new journal as a “necessary alternative to well-funded right-wing Jewish publications.” The news release announcing Fragments did not name those publications but presumably they include Sapir; Mosaic, supported by the right-leaning Tikvah Fund; and Tablet, which is published by Nextbook, Inc., whose president, Mem Bernstein, is on the board of Tikvah and is the widow of its founder. Tablet has published writers from across the political spectrum, but has drawn howls from the left for its frequent articles denouncing “wokeness” and cancel culture and a recent piece questioning the motives of donors who support gender-affirming care for trans people.
(Another journal, The Jewish Review of Books, was initially backed by Tikvah, but recently spun off under its own foundation.)
The premiere issue of Fragments includes essays on concepts of freedom by Laynie Soloman, a director at SVARA, an LGBTQ yeshiva based in Chicago, and Joelle Novey, the director of an interfaith environmental group in the Washington, D.C. area.
Nelson sees two audiences for Fragments: “It’s definitely speaking to the left and offering a deepening of language and of conversation around Jewish sources and Jewish ideas,” he said. “And it’s an effort to speak to the center, which often shares our values and can be spooked by the language they see coming from the right.”
Fittingly for a magazine published by a group formerly known as Rabbis for Human Rights, Fragments leans into Jewish text and religious perspectives. That sets it apart from Jewish Currents, a legacy journal of the Jewish left that, after a relaunch in 2018, now aims for an audience of young, left-wing, mostly secular Jews who, when not anti-Zionist, are deeply critical of Israel. Arielle Angel, editor in chief of Jewish Currents, has said that the magazine has become “a reliable and essential space for challenging, rigorous, surprising work that has shifted the discourse even beyond the American Jewish left.”
The aspiration that the “discourse can be shifted” by gladiators writing for small magazines harkens back to the post-World War II period, a sort of golden age of Jewish thought journals. Jewish and Jewish-adjacent publications like the Menorah Journal, Partisan Review, Commentary and Dissent provided a launching pad for an ideologically fluid cohort of “New York intellectuals” that over the years included Sidney Hook, Hannah Arendt, Lionel Trilling, Saul Bellow, Irving Howe, Delmore Schwartz, Norman Podhoretz, Paul Goodman, Midge Dector, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Alfred Kazin.
Partisan Review was among a spate of magazines that offered a platform for Jewish intellectuals in the years immediately after World War II. (Open Culture)
While writers like these tackled Jewish issues, or general issues through a Jewish lens, many of them influenced the wider national conversation. Angel has said she has drawn inspiration from Commentary: Founded in 1945 by the American Jewish Committee, the magazine became hugely influential in promoting neoconservative ideas and thinkers in the 1980s and ’90s.
The “golden age” was an explosion of Jewish creativity, and political influence, that would be difficult to replicate today. Benjamin Balint, a former editor at Commentary and author of a history of the magazine, says the flowering of Jewish journals in the mid-20th century was the result of “terrific pent-up pressure among the children of immigrants who were pushed down for so long and were able to explode into the mainstream.” Small magazines “provided that release — pushing critics and writers into the larger culture,” said Balint, who previously edited Sources, the journal of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.
A long piece in Tablet recently argued that such Jewish influence is in steep decline “anywhere where American Jews once made their mark,” from academia to Hollywood to government. Author Jacob Savage doesn’t blame the loss of the immigrant work ethic, however, but rather “American liberalism” for marginalizing Jews.
Whatever the cause, few of the newer journals aspire to that kind of influence on the larger culture, and acknowledge that they are trying to shape the conversation within the Jewish community.
“We believe that Jewish leaders need great ideas to do their work well,” said Rabbi Justus Baird, senior vice president for national programs at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and publisher of its journal Sources, launched in 2021. “The way we invest in ideas is by cultivating a large group of Jewish thinkers and scholars who are doing not just the scholarship for its own sake, but really trying to work collaboratively on how Jewish thought can apply to the challenges facing the Jewish people.”
The Hartman Institute (which also counts the Maimonides Fund among its long list of major donors) is a religiously pluralistic, liberal Zionist think tank with outposts in New York and Jerusalem. Recent essays in Sources include lengthy essays by Yale religious studies professor Christine Hayes on the ethics of shaming and Hartman scholar Mijal Bitton on how relationships can heal the breach between the Diaspora and Israel.
Part of Hartman’s goal in publishing the journal is to provide a space for such long-form articles, filling what Baird calls “a gap between the quick, super-responsive, news-oriented Jewish publication landscape, the hot takes about what is going on, and the academic Jewish work.”
“It’s a space where ideas can really percolate,” said Claire Sufrin, who now edits Sources. “The written word, the printed word is there and can be shared in that way and people can engage with it over and over again.”
Masorti, the relaunched journal of Conservative Judaism, is also trying to bridge a gap, in this case between Jewish scholarship and the synagogue.
“Rabbis have responsibilities to serve as congregational leaders, and also the obligation to engage in Jewish learning and scholarship,” said Rabbi Joseph Prouser, the editor of Masorti.
The original Conservative Judaism was published from 1945 through 2014. The reboot is sponsored by the movement’s Rabbinical Assembly and its five seminaries, including the Jewish Theological Seminary, the New York flagship. Its readership base is rabbis and cantors affiliated with the movement.
Masorti arrives at a critical time for the Conservative movement: In an essay in the first issue, its associate editor, Rabbi Jonathan Rosenbaum, says what was once America’s largest Jewish denomination is at a “precipice.”
“At its summit, the plurality of [North American] Jews identified with the Conservative movement, something like 40%,” Rosenbaum said in an interview. “There was something like 1.6 million Jews who were thought to be part of the Conservative movement up to maybe the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. Today, there are about 500,000.
“Part of the goal of the journal,” he said, is to “look at the problems and the means of solving them.”
In the past the Conservative Judaism journal had been a forum for debate within the movement. It published dueling papers, for example, on the decision to ordain women and what is and isn’t permissible on Shabbat. Prouser says he’ll uphold that tradition of dissent: The current issue features an essay by Michal Raucher, a Jewish studies professor at Rutgers University, who criticizes the movement’s establishment for embracing a justification for abortion that doesn’t go far enough in recognizing the bodily autonomy of women (an argument she also advanced in a JTA oped).
And Prouser does hope these arguments are heard beyond the movement, positioned between traditionalist Orthodoxy and liberal Reform. “One of the beauties of the Conservative movement is that we can talk to people to our right to our left right, we can talk to the entire spectrum of the Jewish community,” he said.
The editors of the new journals agree that there are fewer and fewer spaces for civil conversation among Jews, blaming the filter bubble of the internet and the take-no-prisoners style of current political debate. And each said they would like to be part of the solution.
Sufrin, the editor of Hartman’s journal, calls it a “bridge, because people can talk about it together, they can engage with the ideas together, and it’s in that conversation that they can develop a relationship and ultimately, talk together more productively.”
The question is whether it is too late: At a time when algorithms reward readers with the kind of material they are likely to agree with, will even an elite reach across ideological divides and listen to what the other side is saying? When institutions — from government to religion — regard compromise as surrender, who dares to concede that your ideological opponent might have a point?
“Difference and disagreement are productive when we engage with the best versions of those with whom we disagree,” Hayes writes in Sources. That sounds like a call to action. Or is it an epitaph?
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Nazi Symbols Appear at Northwestern University as School Seeks to Turn Page on Campus Antisemitism Crisis
Illustrative: Signs cover the fence at a pro-Palestinian encampment at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. on April 28, 2024. Photo: Max Herman via Reuters Connect
Northwestern University said on Monday that it has identified the non-student who graffitied Nazi insignia on the campus earlier this month, pledging to file criminal charges against the suspect through the local police department.
The Schutzstaffel (SS) symbol representing the notorious paramilitary group under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany was spray-painted on Northwestern’s campus in Evanston, Illinois. The SS played a central role in the Nazis’ systematic killing of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.
After the symbol’s discovery, students reported others like it on the north side of campus even as university maintenance staff rushed to repair the first defacement.
“Despicable and hateful graffiti were found on several signs of our Evanston campus, and the university immediately removed or painted over them,” the university told a local outlet, The Evanston RoundTable, in a statement on Feb. 6. “Northwestern has launched an investigation to identify the individual responsible for this vandalism, utilizing camera footage, forensics, and other methods. Based on that investigation, we have identified a suspect who we belief is unaffiliated with Northwestern.”
It added, “The university is working with local law enforcement on next steps, including potential criminal charges.”
On Feb. 10, The Northwestern Daily reported that the Evanston Police Department is involved in the investigation. “The department takes reports of hate-based incidents seriously and continues to pursue investigative leads,” a spokesperson for the department said.
Northwestern University has been the site of dozens of antisemitic incidents and the center of the federal government’s efforts to combat campus antisemitism.
During the 2023-2o24 academic year, former university president Michael Schill reached a shocking and unprecedented agreement with pro-Hamas organizers of an illegal encampment, agreeing to establish a new scholarship for Palestinian undergraduates, contact potential employers of students who caused recent campus disruptions to insist on their being hired, and create a segregated dormitory hall to be occupied exclusively by Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Muslim students. The university — where protesters shouted “Kill the Jews!” — also agreed to form a new investment committee that would consider adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
In late November, Northwestern University agreed to pay $75 million and end the controversial agreement in exchange for the US federal government’s releasing $790 million in grants it impounded in April over accusations of antisemitism and reverse discrimination.
“As part of this agreement with the federal government, the university has terminated the Deering Meadow Agreement and will reverse all policies that have been implemented or are being implemented in adherence to it,” the university said in a statement which stressed that it also halted plans for the segregated dormitory. “The university remains committed to fostering inclusive spaces and will continue to support student belonging and engagement through existing campus facilities and organizations, while partnering with alumni to explore off-campus, privately owned locations that could further support community connection and programming.”
Northwestern had previously touted its progress on addressing the campus antisemitism crisis in April, saying that it had addressed alleged failures highlighted by lawmakers and Jewish civil rights activists.
“The university administration took this criticism to heart and spent much of last summer revising our rules and policies to make our university safe for all of our students, regardless of their religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, or political viewpoint,” the university said at the time. “Among the updated policies is our Demonstration Policy, which includes new requirements and guidance on how, when, and where members of the community may protest or otherwise engage in expressive activity.”
The university added that it also adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool which aids officials in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and begun holding “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions which “all students, faculty, and staff” must attend.
“This included a live training for all new students in September and a 17-minute training module for all enrolled students, produced in collaboration with the Jewish United Fund,” it continued. “Antisemitism trainings will continue as a permanent part of our broader training in civil rights and Title IX.”
Other initiatives rolled out by the university include an Advisory Council to the President on Jewish Life, dinners for Jewish students hosted by administrative officials, and educational events which raise awareness of rising antisemitism in the US and around the world. Additionally, Northwestern said that it imposed disciplinary sanctions against several students and one staff member whose conduct violated the new “Demonstration and/or Display Policies” which safeguard peaceful assembly on the campus.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Iran Says It Won’t Negotiate Over Missile Program as Trump Meets Netanyahu, With Nuclear Diplomacy Topping Agenda
US President Donald Trump talks with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Knesset, Oct. 13, 2025, in Jerusalem. Photo: Evan Vucci/Pool via REUTERS
Iran‘s missile capabilities are its red line and are not a subject to be negotiated, an adviser to Iran‘s supreme leader said on Wednesday, as US President Donald Trump hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House amid diplomacy between Washington and Tehran.
“The Islamic Republic’s missile capabilities are non-negotiable,” Ali Shamkhani said according to state media while appearing in a march commemorating the 47th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.
Netanyahu was expected to press Trump to widen US talks with Iran to include limits on Tehran’s missile arsenal and other security threats beyond its nuclear program.
US and Iranian diplomats held indirect talks last Friday in Oman, amid a regional naval buildup by the US threatening Iran. Tehran and Washington are eyeing a new round of negotiations to avert conflict.
Washington has sought to extend talks on Iran‘s nuclear capabilities to cover its missile program as well. Iran has said it is prepared to discuss curbs on its nuclear program in return for the lifting of sanctions, but has repeatedly ruled out linking the issue to other questions including missiles.
On Sunday, Iran‘s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Tehran’s missile program had never been part of the talks’ agenda.
Both Israel and the US see Iran’s missile arsenal as an urgent threat.
In his seventh meeting with Trump since the president returned to office nearly 13 months ago, Netanyahu was looking to influence the next round of US discussions with Iran following the nuclear negotiations held in Oman.
Trump has threatened strikes on Iran if no agreement is reached, while Tehran has vowed to retaliate, stoking fears of a wider war. He has repeatedly voiced support for a secure Israel, a longstanding US ally and arch-foe of Iran.
In media interviews on Tuesday, Trump reiterated his warning, saying that while he believes Iran wants a deal, he would do “something very tough” if it refused.
TRUMP SAYS NO TO IRANIAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS, MISSILES
Trump told Fox Business that a good deal with Iran would mean “no nuclear weapons, no missiles,” without elaborating. He also told Axios he was considering sending a second aircraft carrier strike group as part of a major US buildup near Iran.
Israel fears that the US might pursue a narrow nuclear deal that does not include restrictions on Iran‘s ballistic missile program or an end to Iranian support for armed proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah, according to people familiar with the matter. Israeli officials have urged the US not to trust Iran‘s promises.
“I will present to the president our perceptions of the principles in the negotiations,” Netanyahu told reporters before departing for the US. The two leaders could also discuss potential military action if diplomacy with Iran fails, one source said.
Netanyahu’s arrival at the White House was lower-key than usual. He entered the building away from the view of reporters and cameras, and a White House official then confirmed he was inside meeting with Trump.
GAZA ON THE AGENDA
Also on the agenda was Gaza, with Trump looking to push ahead with a ceasefire agreement he helped to broker. Progress on his 20-point plan to end the war and rebuild the shattered Palestinian enclave has stalled, with major gaps over steps such as Hamas disarming as Israeli troops withdraw in phases.
Netanyahu’s visit, originally scheduled for Feb. 18, was brought forward amid renewed US engagement with Iran. Both sides at last week’s Oman meeting said the talks were positive and further talks were expected soon.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said ahead of the Oman meeting that negotiations would need to address Iran‘s missiles, its proxy groups, and its treatment of its own population. Iran said Friday’s talks focused only on nuclear issues.
Trump has been vague about broadening the negotiations. He was quoted as telling Axios on Tuesday that it was a “no-brainer” for any deal to cover Iran‘s nuclear program, but that he also thought it possible to address its missile stockpiles.
Iran says its nuclear activities are for peaceful purposes, while the US and Israel have accused it of past efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
Last June, the US joined Israel’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities during a 12-day war.
Israel also heavily damaged Iran‘s air defenses and missile arsenal. Two Israeli officials say there are signs Iran is working to restore those capabilities.
Trump threatened last month to intervene militarily during a bloody crackdown on anti-government protests in Iran, but ultimately held off.
ISRAEL WARY OF A WEAKENED IRAN REBUILDING
Tehran’s regional influence has been weakened by Israel’s June attack, losses suffered by its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq, and the ousting of its ally, former Syrian President Bashar al‑Assad.
But Israel is wary of its adversaries rebuilding after the multi‑front war triggered by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, assault on southern Israel.
While Trump and Netanyahu have mostly been in sync and the US remains Israel’s main arms supplier, Wednesday’s meeting could expose tensions.
Part of Trump’s Gaza plan holds out the prospect for eventual Palestinian statehood – which Netanyahu and his coalition have resisted.
Netanyahu’s security cabinet on Sunday authorized steps that would make it easier for Israeli settlers in the West Bank to buy land while granting Israel broader powers in what the Palestinians see as part of a future state. The decision drew international condemnation.
“I am against annexation,” Trump told Axios, reiterating his stance. “We have enough things to think about now.”
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University of California Faculty Fuel Antisemitism on Campus, New Report Finds
May 1, 2024; Los Angeles, California, USA; A flag is waved during a sit-in outside of a pro-Palestinian encampment at the campus of UCLA. Violence broke out early in the morning at the encampment, hours after the university declared that the camp “is unlawful and violates university policy.” Photo: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
The antisemitism crisis at the University of California was started and accelerated by anti-Zionist faculty, according to a new report which draws on hundreds of antisemitic incidents to paint a picture of a higher education system that has become unmoored from its educational mission.
The AMCHA Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to documenting and combating antisemitism at US institutions of higher education, on Wednesday released its latest report, titled “When Faculty Take Sides: How Academic Infrastructure Drives Antisemitism at the University of California.”
Examining the “antisemitism crisis” across University of California (UC) campuses since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, the study exposes Oct 7 denialism; faculty calling for driving Jewish institutions off campus; the founding of pro-Hamas, Faculty for Justice in Palestine groups; and hundreds of endorsers of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
As AMCHA tells the story, the situation is not simply the work of students but also of willing, culpable adults who intentionally reprised the world’s oldest hatreds while masking it as academic and intellectual freedom.
“While students are the most visible actors, faculty and academic departments are key institutional drivers of the hostile environment,” the AMCHA Initiative said on Wednesday in a press release shared with The Algemeiner. “Across three campuses, many faculty who promoted anti-Israel activism through university channels had previously endorsed an academic boycott of Israel (academic BDS). The boycott’s guidelines explicitly call on supporters to implement ‘anti-normalization’ in their professional roles. These include excluding Zionist perspectives, speakers, and programs from academic life.”
AMCHA Initiative executive director Tammi Rossman-Benjamin added, “This is far bigger than a discipline issue — it’s a faculty governance failure. Until UC enforces clear boundaries on faculty and academic-unit conduct, Jewish students will continue to face intimidation, exclusion, and harassment sanctioned by the institution itself.”
The report follows previous studies revealing the extent of faculty misconduct in higher education promoting anti-Israel animus and even outright antisemitism.
Just last week, The Algemeiner learned that, according to a lawsuit, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University assigned a Jewish student a project on “what Jews do to make themselves such a hated group.”
Similar incidents have come at a fast clip since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre: a Cornell University praised the terrorist group’s atrocities, which including mass sexual assaults; a Columbia University professor exalted Hamas terrorists who paraglided into a music festival to murder Israeli youth as the “air force of the Palestinian resistance; and a Harvard University chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) shared an antisemitic cartoon which depicted Zionists as murderers of Blacks and Arabs.
The University of California system is a microcosm of faculty antisemitism, the AMCHA Initiative explains in the exhaustive 158-page report, which focuses on the Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz campuses.
“The report documents how concentrated networks of faculty activists on each campus, often operating through academic units and faculty-led advocacy formations, convert institutional platforms into vehicles for organized anti-Zionist advocacy and mobilization,” the report states. “It shows how those pathways are associated with recurring student harms and broader campus disruption. It then outlines concrete steps the UC Regents can take to restore institutional neutrality in academic units and set enforceable boundaries so UC resources and authority are not used to advance activist agendas inside the university’s core educational functions.”
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) alone holds at least 115 faculty endorsers of the BDS movement, according to the report. Meanwhile, dozens of its academic departments issued statements of support of the pro-Hamas encampments which struck college campuses during the 2023-2024 academic school year and became the hubs of antisemitic assault and discrimination.
Faculty for Justice in Palestine offered more than supportive words, the report says, “defending and helping orchestrate boycott-aligned activism (including encampment demands), seeking to deplatform Israeli speakers, and filing an amicus brief … that denied Zionism’s place within Jewish identity and defended exclusionary encampment conduct toward Zionist Jewish students, including expulsion from campus spaces.”
The federal government impounded, according to various reports, some $250 million to punish UCLA’s alleged exposing Jewish students to discrimination by refusing to intervene when civil rights violations transpired or failing to correct a hostile environment after the fact. The move came only days after UCLA agreed to donate $2.33 million to a consortium of Jewish civil rights organizations to resolve an antisemitism complaint filed by three students and an employee.
Many antisemitic incidents occurred at UCLA before the institution was ultimately sued and placed in the crosshairs of the Trump administration.
Just five days after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, as previously reported by The Algemeiner, anti-Zionist protesters chanted “Itbah El Yahud” at Bruin Plaza, which means “slaughter the Jews” in Arabic. Other incidents included someone’s tearing a chapter page out of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America, titled “Loudmouth Jew,” and leaving it outside the home of a UCLA faculty member, as well as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) staging a disturbing demonstration in which its members cudgeled a piñata, to which a picture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s face was glued, while shouting “beat the Jew.”
The US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has ruled that UCLA’s response to antisemitic incidents constituted violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
“Our investigation into the University of California system has found concerning evidence of systemic antisemitism at UCLA that demands severe accountability from the institution,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “This disgusting breach of civil rights against students will not stand: the [Department of Justice] will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.