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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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Photos: Pro-Israel counter-protesters overwhelm anti-Zionist bike rally in Philadelphia, where police arrest 3
Hundreds of pro-Israel counter-protesters gathered around Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square Sunday morning ahead of a bike rally targeting six Jewish-owned restaurants. There were about 300 anti-Zionist protesters and about 200 pro-Israel counterprotesters, police estimated. Rally organizers said the timing — just before the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, when Nazis attacked Jewish shops and homes — was coincidental.
Three people were arrested Sunday, according to police. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, said a few hours after the crowd had dispersed, “In the midst of blatant antisemitic targeting of Jewish-owned restaurants on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the City of Brotherly Love showed up to support our neighborhood businesses and prove once again that hate has no place in our Commonwealth.”
The post Photos: Pro-Israel counter-protesters overwhelm anti-Zionist bike rally in Philadelphia, where police arrest 3 appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel’s President Herzog tasks Gadi Eisenkot with forming Israel’s next government
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Sunday formally tasked Gadi Eisenkot with forming the next government, nearly two weeks after the country held a national election and days after a majority of parliamentary factions said they would recommend Eisenkot as the next prime minister.
“Yashar Leader Gadi Eisenkot, I expect you to do everything in your power to establish a government that will serve the entire people, those who supported it and those who did not, and that will be a responsible and decent address for all sectors, faiths, ways of life, and worldviews,” Herzog said in a televised ceremony held at his residence in Jerusalem.
Eisenkot has up to six weeks to assemble a coalition, a step that typically includes at least 61 seats out of 120 in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. If he fails to do so within that time, then the president can give another Knesset member the opportunity to form a government.
In his speech on Sunday, Eisenkot said that Israeli democracy was “at one of its most vulnerable moments.”
“The campaign to undermine the legitimacy of our democracy, together with the growing distrust in state institutions, fueled daily, has brought us to an extremely dangerous point,” he said, adding that continuing on this path Israel would reach the “point of no return.”
“The formal consultations held here, at the President’s Residence, have revealed a clear picture: an absolute majority of Knesset members, representing the Israeli public, support change and support me as prime minister,” he said.
Some 67 members of the Knesset recommended Eisenkot, a former IDF chief of staff, for prime minister during those consultations. Meanwhile, 46 members of Knesset recommended incumbent Prime Minister and Likud Leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. One faction, United Torah Judaism, with seven members of Knesset, refrained from recommending any candidate.
The consultations, Herzog said, “brought to the surface the disputes, the painful points, and of course, the multitude of voices within Israeli society and politics.”
He added that the differences “reminded us all that every citizen of Israel has an equal voice, from every side, every view, every way of life, and every faith.”
Eisenkot said he would work to bridge those divisions and attempt to form a national emergency government, even if it required “creative and unconventional political initiatives.”
For his part, Netanyahu has urged Eisenkot to join him in an emergency national unity government that will keep Israel strong against ongoing threats.
Eisenkot has responded that the “national emergency government” he will form will comprise the “four Zionist parties” of the change bloc – his own Yashar Party, B’Yachad headed by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beitenu Party and the Democrats under Yair Golan.
He also said he would welcome “parties and Knesset members who support Yashar’s four principles” to join the coalition.
At the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on Sunday, Eisenkot said he would be sending out formal invitations as soon as possible “to every Knesset faction, calling on all their members, both as parties and as individuals, to take part in forming the government and bringing it to its swearing-in.”
“The rule is simple,” he added. “If you are prepared to sign on to the four principles I have set out, you are potential partners in a national emergency government under my leadership.”
Throughout his campaign, and particularly since the Oct. 27 election, Eisenkot has emphasized these four principles as the basis for forming the next government.
1) Recognition of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
Eisenkot wants to define his coalition as a government that is committed to Israel’s Jewish national identity and to democracy, not simply an alliance united by opposition to Netanyahu.
Any party wanting to join must accept Israel’s identity as the national home of the Jewish people first. The requirement has historically been contentious for Israel’s two Arab parties, who represent 19 Knesset members.
Parties must also accept the country’s democratic institutions, which uphold equality and rights for all citizens and prioritize the rule of law.
This means parties, such as the far-right and the ultra-Orthodox, that, as members of the outgoing government, have been pushing to overhaul the country’s judiciary – a key institution in Israel’s system of democratic checks and balances – might think twice about joining.
2) Acceptance of the values of the Declaration of Independence.
Israel’s Declaration of Independence, proclaimed and signed on May 14, 1948, is a foundational document that has helped shape the country’s constitutional principles, although Israel does not have a single, formal written constitution.
In it, the signatories laid out their vision for Israel, including the historical ties the Jewish people have to the land of Israel and its place as a safe haven for Jews around the world who are in trouble.
For Eisenkot, the emphasis appears to be on one particular section that declares: “The State of Israel will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens, irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; and it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
By embracing the Declaration of Independence, Eisenkot is recognizing the place of Israel’s minority groups, highlighting their “full and equal citizenship.” A point mentioned twice in the declaration.
The declaration also reaffirms that Israel is a country seeking peace, rather than endless conflict, at a time when Netanyahu has recently been criticized over his handling of the country’s wars on multiple fronts.
3) Mandatory service for all — military, national, and civilian, to strengthen the IDF and expand its ranks.
Including this condition for joining the government is a direct message to the ultra-Orthodox parties, at least one of which is considering supporting Eisenkot’s coalition.
United Torah Judaism, which has been aligned closely with Netanyahu’s bloc for at least the past two decades, on Thursday refused to recommend the prime minister as Israel’s next leader. Instead, the party, which holds seven seats, abstained from recommending any candidate.
Both UTJ and the second ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, have resisted efforts that would include ultra-Orthodox young men studying in yeshiva under a universal draft law requiring all eligible Israelis to perform military service.
Previous exemption laws have expired, and Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s blanket exemption of yeshiva students from military service has no legal basis and violates principles of equality before the law.
By including this condition, Eisenkot is telling the ultra-Orthodox – and even the Arab community, most of whose members are also exempt from mandatory military service – that everyone in Israel must do their part, whether through military service or some type of national or community service.
This stipulation could either keep the ultra-Orthodox out of the government, even though Eisenkot’s partners have expressed willingness to allow their participation. Or it could force them to be more flexible on an issue that until now they have appeared unrelenting.
4) Recognition of Hamas as a terrorist organization and commitment to dismantling its military and governing power.
Leaders of the two Arab parties, the Islamist Ra’am Party and the more nationalist Joint List, have refused to make this statement out loud.
Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas, who has repeatedly condemned the Oct. 7 attack, has said he does have a clear position on this but refuses to state it publicly for several reasons ranging from concerns about his personal safety to his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Hamas is also affiliated. He has also questioned why Arab politicians are required to pass loyalty tests that are not applied equally to Jewish politicians.
When President Herzog pressed him on the matter last week, Abbas said: “I have an unequivocal answer, but leave me space to be a bridge. To also influence the other side.” He argued that maintaining channels of communication with Palestinians requires him not to adopt language that would immediately alienate them.
For the Joint List, the continued refusal to call Hamas a terror group appears to reflect the view that Hamas is part of the broader Palestinian political movement. Some of its members argue that labeling it a terrorist organization risks delegitimizing Palestinian political aspirations as a whole.
Members of the 11-member faction have condemned the Oct. 7 massacre, but are unlikely to accept this particular condition because it could be used to justify Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and the West Bank. Its leaders also want to preserve their credibility among Palestinian voters, many of whom see the conflict through the lens of occupation and Palestinian national rights.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israel’s President Herzog tasks Gadi Eisenkot with forming Israel’s next government appeared first on The Forward.
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Boy George’s Tel Aviv concert was not perfect. For the crowd, that was beside the point
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — Sound problems, guitar trouble and an admission of forgotten lyrics punctuated Boy George’s second Tel Aviv show Saturday night. But the British pop star, irreverent, occasionally exasperated and frequently hilarious, could hardly have asked for a more forgiving audience.
At 65, the Culture Club frontman is no longer the chart-topping phenomenon of the 1980s. Although plenty of those who filled Menora Mivtachim Arena were old enough to remember his heyday firsthand, his appeal went well beyond nostalgia.
At a time when international stars have largely stayed away from Israel, George has become one of the country’s most outspoken supporters, enduring considerable backlash from within the music industry for his refusal to remain silent over the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
“Silence is not a f—ing option,” he said to thunderous applause.
Saturday’s concert, the second of two nearly sold-out performances following Wednesday’s show at the same venue, was dedicated to survivors of the Nova music festival massacre and bereaved families, with 1,500 tickets donated to members of the community. Israeli DJ and producer Ofer Nissim joined George onstage in the second half, bringing a dance-club element to an evening that mixed Culture Club classics, covers and newer material.
His habit of mocking himself and mimicking others repeatedly drove the crowd to laughter, turning interruptions that might have derailed a slicker performance into part of the entertainment.
The banter ranged from wisecracks about technical glitches to personal reflections on the hostility he has encountered over his support for Israel. When a guitar failed to produce any sound, he appeared mildly irritated, telling the crew, “You have to plug things in, you know.”
“This is a weird moment,” he added, before smiling and continuing, “but this whole night has been a weird moment.”
Introducing his cover of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” he explained that he had attempted it on Wednesday but forgotten the lyrics. “Luckily, this time I have autocue,” he said, breaking into his trademark laugh.
As for his detractors around the world, he made clear that he had little interest in winning them over.
“I’m 65. It’s too late to hate me, I don’t give a s–t,” he told the audience.
The one person’s opinion that mattered to him, he said, was his late mother’s. Recalling an Irishman who had suggested that his Irish mother would be ashamed of his support for Israel, given Ireland’s strong sympathy for the Palestinian cause, George was defiant.
“I can tell you categorically my mother will be more proud of me than she’s ever been,” he said.
In another characteristically unpredictable diversion, George dedicated his solo release “Clouds” to Philip Sallon, a longtime Jewish friend and influential figure in London’s club scene who helped introduce him to Jewish traditions when he was young.
The two have since fallen out. “He hates my guts right now,” George said, asking anyone who knew Sallon to tell him that he had sung the song for him in Israel as an act of forgiveness, “as a mitzvah.”
But the evening’s most emotional moments belonged to “We Will Dance Again,” the song George released in July about the Nova attack. Its lyrics explicitly reference the atrocities committed on Oct. 7, criticize fellow musicians for their silence and challenge accusations of genocide against Israel.
George’s eight-day visit included a meeting with President Isaac Herzog and a trip to the Nova massacre site near Kibbutz Re’im, where Hamas terrorists murdered more than 360 festivalgoers on Oct. 7, 2023.
Having visited Israel many times before, he told the audience that this trip had affected him differently. He also appeared uneasy about the gratitude being lavished on him.
“It’s awkward for me as an outsider to be in the midst of this amazing recovery and sadness,” he said.
Survivors of the Nova massacre and relatives of those murdered joined George onstage carrying Israeli flags for “We Will Dance Again.”
George, having changed into a colorful, geometric-print suit and rhinestone-studded black hat, performed the reggae-inflected song about one of the most traumatic events in Israeli history while embracing the survivors and bereaved relatives beside him.
At one point, he seemed close to tears. “I’m going to cry,” he said.
But even the solemnity didn’t last long. When George invited one of the bereaved women to address the crowd, she demurred because she didn’t speak English.
“I’ve never met a Jewish person who doesn’t have anything to say,” he joked, drawing laughter and applause from the crowd.
In the audience, people swayed to lyrics that included an explicit reference to girls raped against trees. Kay, a singer from Tel Aviv, remained seated, tears in her eyes.
“I can’t dance to that,” she said.
Yet she was deeply moved by George and the atmosphere surrounding the performance, and was untroubled by its hiccups.
“It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be human, and that’s what connects us,” she said.
Tammy, a 60-year-old dance instructor who regularly plays Culture Club songs in her classes, hadn’t initially intended to attend. But after seeing footage of George’s Wednesday performance, she changed her mind.
“I saw the clips on social media and was jealous of people who went,” she said.
Lavie, a 24-year-old Israeli-born performer who divides his time between New York and Los Angeles, had never heard of Boy George before the singer began making headlines in Israel. He started studying his music ahead of the concert, hoping to learn from the veteran entertainer’s stagecraft.
“I learned a lot,” he said toward the end of the performance. “What impressed me most was how he handled all the glitches with grace and humor.”
Not everyone was quite so impressed.
Daniel, a Jaffa resident originally from Los Angeles, was scathing about the musical performance and even more critical of the audience’s reaction.
“Everyone was off-key, and it was just awful,” he said. “But what bothered me most was the crowd’s desperate need for approval.”
“We need a national therapy session to counter our neediness,” he added.
George saved “Karma Chameleon,” the 1983 hit that made him a household name around the world, for the finale. By then, the show had stretched to roughly two and a half hours, but thousands of people were still on their feet.
George contrasted the atmosphere in Israel with London, which he described as “full of anxiety and tension.”
“It feels so relaxed here,” he said. “I don’t want to go home.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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