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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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California College Employee Calling Jewish Professor ‘Colonizer’ Was Antisemitic, Investigation Finds
Sign reading “Welcome to City College of San Francisco” above glass entry doors with building number 88, San Francisco, California, Aug. 29, 2025. Photo: Smith Collection/Gado/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
A City College of San Francisco (CCSF) staff member who called a Jewish professor a “colonizer” among other verbal attacks engaged in unlawful harassment and discrimination based on the academic’s Jewish identity, according to an independent investigation into the incident.
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the StandWithUs Saidoff Legal Center, two Jewish advocacy groups, on Tuesday celebrated the upholding of a disciplinary investigation’s finding as a “significant victory” for Jewish faculty and students.
“The outcome establishes a critical precedent for how universities must evaluate conduct often mischaracterized as political speech but that, in context, targets Jewish identity,” the groups said in a statement.
The investigation stemmed from a series of incidents which escalated to an explosive May 2025 confrontation in which CCSF employee Maria Salazar-Colon, president of the local Service Employees International Union (SEIU) union, allegedly launched a volley of anti-Jewish invective at computer science professor Abigail Bornstein. Calling Bornstein a “colonizer” and telling her to “shut the f—k up,” Salazar-Colon converted the professor’s name into a sobriquet by denouncing her as “Dumb-stein” during the public comment portion in a meeting of the community college’s board of trustees, according to the Brandeis Center and StandWithUs.
That utterance, combined with other comments related to Israel, indicated Salazar-Colon’s awareness of Bornstein’s Jewishness and her willingness to degrade her over it, the Brandeis Center and StandWithUs said — noting that a trivial discussion on college “governance,” not politics or the Middle East conflict, set the staff member off.
Salazar-Colon allegedly continued targeting Bornstein through email, denouncing her again as a “colonizer” and making other crude statements. The conduct drove the professor off campus. She reported the alleged harassment to the CCSF administration and filed a criminal complaint with the local police.
However, Salazar-Colon hit back, filing her own grievance in response to allege that she was the victim. Meanwhile, the college hired a law firm as a third-party investigator to look into the matter. Its findings were conclusive, determining not only that Salazar-Colon was fully culpable but that her conduct, rising to “workplace violence,” was intentionally discriminatory against a Jewish colleague.
CCSF ultimately dismissed Salazar-Colon’s “retaliatory” complaint, but the finality of its decision hung on the opinion of the college trustees. Salazar-Colon filed an appeal with the body. It took no action, crystallizing, the Brandeis Center and StandWithUs said, a consensus on the “seriousness of the underlying conduct and the strength of support for the [third-party investigator’s] findings.”
On Monday, Brandeis Center staff litigation attorney Deena Margolies told The Algemeiner that, in this case, justice prevailed but that many other Jewish members of academia suffer similar indignities.
“The college did the right thing here. They brought in an independent investigator. They made clear that this was about discrimination based on Bornstein’s protected identity, that being Jewish — not union advocacy — and that’s important and a necessary distinction that we don’t often see being recognized,” Margolies said. “I’m seeing many more of these disciplinary matters in the employee context, and I notice that what often happens is that when a Jewish professor or staff member is targeted or files a complaint, there is often a cross complaint, a baseless complaint which is retaliatory. And yet, they always end up coming through.”
CCSF will be taking disciplinary action. against Salazar-Colon.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, antisemitism promoted by university employees often disguises itself as politics, complicating higher education institutions’ response to it.
In September, a survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) found that staff and faculty accelerated the “antisemitism” crisis on US college campuses by politicizing the classroom, promoting anti-Israel bias, and even discriminating against Jewish colleagues. It found that 73 percent of Jewish faculty witnessed their colleagues engaging in antisemitic activity, and a significant percentage named the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) group as the force driving it.
Of those aware of an FSJP chapter on their campus, the vast majority of respondents reported that the chapter engaged in anti-Israel programming (77.2 percent), organized anti-Israel protests and demonstrations (79.4 percent), and endorsed anti-Israel divestment campaigns (84.8 percent). Additionally, 50 percent of respondents said that anti-Zionist faculty have established de facto, or “shadow,” boycotts of Israel on campus even in the absence of formal declaration or recognition of one by the administration. Among those who reported the presence of such a boycott, 55 percent noted that departments avoid co-sponsoring events with Jewish or pro-Israel groups and 29.5 percent said this policy is also subtly enacted by sabotaging negotiations for partnerships with Israeli institutions. All the while, such faculty fostered an environment in which Jewish professors were “maligned, professionally isolated, and in severe cases, doxxed or harassed” as they assumed the right to determine for their Jewish colleagues what constitutes antisemitism.
Administrative officials responded inconsistently to antisemitic hatred, affording additional rationale to the downstream of hatred. More than half (53.1 percent) of respondents described their university’s response to incidents involving antisemitism or anti-Israel bias as “very” or “somewhat” unhelpful, and a striking 77.3 percent thought the same of their professional academic associations. In totality, alleged faculty misconduct and administrative dereliction combined to degrade the professional experiences of Jewish professors, as many reported “worsening mental and physical health, increased self-censorship, fear for personal safety,” and a sense that the destruction of their careers and reputations was imminent.
“Antisemitism cannot and should not be downplayed as political, academic, or workplace disagreement. Antisemitism is, clearly and concretely, insidious discrimination,” Brandeis Center chairman Kenneth Marcus, a former US assistant secretary of education for civil rights, said in a statement released with the news of the outcome of the CCSF incident. “Institutions have both the authority and the obligation to intervene, and we are hopeful that these outcomes encourage those who wish to report incidents of antisemitism to come forward without fear of retaliation.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Turkish Intel Chief Hosts Hamas Leaders as New Report Warns of Turkey’s Ties to Muslim Brotherhood
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a ceremony for the handover of new vehicles to the gendarmerie and police forces in Istanbul, Turkey, Nov. 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Murad Sezer
Turkey’s extensive ties with Hamas and other terrorist groups and Islamist movements are raising alarm bells among analysts, highlighting Ankara’s controversial pivot away from its traditional Western alliances amid ongoing regional conflicts.
This week, Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalın met in Ankara with Khalil Al-Khaya, a senior Hamas negotiator, and the terrorist group’s political bureau delegation to discuss prospects for advancing the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire — marking the second such meeting in under two weeks.
Last week, Kalın also met with senior Hamas leaders in Istanbul, underscoring Turkey’s ongoing diplomatic engagement with the Islamist group.
Notably absent from both meetings’ public summaries was any mention of Hamas’s disarmament — a key condition of the US-backed peace plan, which the terrorist group continues to reject, further complicating ceasefire efforts.
Earlier this year, the US-backed plan to end the war in Gaza hit major roadblocks after proposals surfaced that would allow Hamas to retain some small arms — an idea strongly denounced by Israeli officials who insist the Islamist group must fully disarm.
Israel has previously warned that Hamas must give up its weapons for the second phase of the ceasefire to move forward, pointing to tens of thousands of rifles and an active network of underground tunnels still under the terrorist group’s control.
Last week, US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” reportedly presented a disarmament plan to Hamas that would require the terrorist group to allow the destruction of its vast Gaza tunnel network as it lays down its arms in stages over eight months. Palestinian officials indicated Hamas would not accept the proposal without “amendments and improvements.”
Under Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan, phase two would involve deploying an international stabilization force (ISF), beginning large-scale reconstruction, and establishing a Palestinian technocratic committee to oversee the territory’s administration.
Conditioned on Hamas’s disarmament, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would also withdraw from the approximately 53 percent of the enclave they currently occupy.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Turkey has repeatedly tried to position itself as a regional mediator, maintaining direct intelligence channels with Hamas to advance ceasefire talks and solidifying its role in US-backed diplomatic efforts.
However, Turkey has also been a long-time backer of Hamas, hosting senior officials multiple times over the years and refusing to designate the group as a terrorist organization. Ankara has also provided Hamas with both political and financial support by allowing its leadership to operate networks from Turkish soil.
Israeli officials have repeatedly accused Hamas operatives of using Turkey as a base for recruitment, financing, and operational coordination.
On Monday, Israeli intelligence services uncovered a Hamas terror network in the West Bank, directed by an operative based in Turkey, revealing ongoing coordination between the group’s cells abroad and on the ground.
According to Sinan Ciddi, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based think tank, Turkey’s high-level meetings with Hamas and growing engagement in Gaza reflect a stark gap between its public diplomacy and private dealings, revealing a calculated effort to maintain influence in the region.
“Publicly, Turkey has presented itself as a diplomatic broker seeking a ceasefire. Privately, its continued high-level engagement with Hamas, particularly through intelligence channels, signals an enduring political alignment and a willingness to preserve the group as a relevant actor in postwar Gaza,” Ciddi wrote in a newly released report.
“Ankara’s maintenance of access to Hamas leadership is likely intended to help ensure Turkey retains influence over any future political settlement,” he continued.
Israel has consistently opposed any role for Turkish security forces in postwar Gaza, with Ankara seeking to expand its regional influence — a move experts warn could strengthen Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure.
Amid growing concerns over Turkey’s regional influence, a newly released FDD report underscored the country’s pivot under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from its traditional Western alignment toward closer ties with Islamist movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood.
The report identified Turkey as a key refuge for Muslim Brotherhood leaders from across the region, including Egypt and Yemen, a role that has intensified after many fled their home countries amid government crackdowns.
For years, the Muslim Brotherhood has faced bans or restrictions across the Middle East, with some European countries and the United States recently designating the group or specific branches as terrorist organization.
“There is an established track record … where Turkey significantly undermines the transatlantic alliance’s core security concerns,” Ciddi said.
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US Appeals Court Reinstates $655M Ruling Against Palestinian Authorities Over Terrorism
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas looks on as he visits the Istishari Cancer Center in Ramallah, in the West Bank, May 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Torokman
A US federal appeals court on Monday reinstated a whopping $655.5 million judgment against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA), delivering a major legal victory for American victims seeking to hold the groups responsible for the notorious “pay-for-slay” terrorism program.
The ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit restored a jury’s earlier finding that the PLO and PA bore civil liability under the Anti-Terrorism Act for a series of attacks in Israel that killed and injured US citizens.
In its opinion, the court recalled its previous mandate vacating the initial decision, writing that doing so was warranted by “intervening changes in underlying law” and the need to prevent an unjust outcome after years of litigation. The panel emphasized that appellate courts retained the authority to revisit earlier decisions in “extraordinary circumstances,” a standard it found satisfied in this case.
The judges also addressed the issue of jurisdiction, which had previously served as an obstacle in the case.
In 2023, a federal appeals court ruled that US courts did not have the authority to hear certain lawsuits against the PLO and the PA stemming from terrorist attacks abroad that killed or injured American citizens. In a decision issued by Second Circuit court, the panel concluded that Congress could not compel foreign defendants to face litigation in US courts without sufficient ties to the country, dealing a significant setback to victims seeking damages through American legal channels.
But the court signaled that subsequent legal developments from the Supreme Court and evolving interpretations of the Anti-Terrorism Act altered the analysis enough to justify reinstating the judgment.
At the center of the case was the Anti-Terrorism Act’s provision allowing US nationals to seek civil damages for acts of international terrorism. A jury had originally awarded damages to victims and their families, finding a link between the alleged terrorists and attacks targeting civilians. Those damages resulted in the mandated enforcement of the more than $650 million judgment.
For victims’ families and advocates, the decision marked a significant step toward enforcing consequences against groups accused of supporting or incentivizing violence.
Supporters have argued that lawsuits play a critical role in deterring terrorism, particularly when criminal prosecution is not possible. By reinstating the judgment, the court appeared to endorse the broader principle that US law can serve as a tool of accountability, even in cases involving foreign actors and overseas attacks.
The court cautioned that enforcement presents a distinct set of legal and practical challenges. It pointed to potential obstacles including asset location, sovereign protections, and the complexities of executing judgments against foreign entities.
The Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-governance in the West Bank and has long been riddled with accusations of corruption, has for years carried out a so-called “pay-for-slay” program, which rewards terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks against Israelis.
Under this policy, official payments are made to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the families of “martyrs” killed in attacks on Israelis, and Palestinians injured in terrorist attacks.
Reports estimate that approximately 8 percent of the PA’s budget has been allocated to paying stipends to convicted terrorists and their families.
Skeptics suggest the hurdles in seeking financial retribution from the PLO and PA could prove substantial. The PLO and PA maintain limited assets within the US, and some may be protected from seizure. Efforts to enforce the judgment could also raise sensitive diplomatic concerns, particularly given the entities’ role in international negotiations and governance.
The case is likely to have far-reaching implications for future terrorism litigation, particularly as Congress continues to explore ways to expand the reach of US courts in holding foreign actors accountable.