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How to Respond to the Moment: After the Rupture, the Rebuild
Reading from a Torah scroll in accordance with Sephardi tradition. Photo: Sagie Maoz via Wikimedia Commons.
I often teach with photographs. In my Politics and geography course, I not only present arguments, data, figures, and charts, I show pictures – of faces, streets, institutions, and the lived texture of how people organize themselves into communities and nations. I keep piles of images, catalogs, and books that I return to each semester, selecting and setting aside, trying to find the picture that will do the work a paragraph of writing cannot achieve.
Wrapping up the spring semester, sorting through those piles, I came back to Maya Benton’s Roman Vishniac Rediscovered. It had been months since I had opened it. I had not used it this term and was prepared to reshelf it, and then I stopped and looked through it.
I paused and I then gasped. I had completely forgotten how hard these photographs hit.
We tend to remember Vishniac for the images he made in Eastern Europe before the war with faces marked by poverty, communities suspended between endurance and fragility, a world that now feels both intimate and impossibly distant. Those photographs read, in retrospect, like a warning. The New York photographs, taken just a few years later after Vishniac arrived in the city on New Year’s Day 1941 having escaped internment in Nazi-occupied France, read like something else. They read like a response.
At first glance, the images are almost disarmingly ordinary. Children sit in classrooms. Boys cluster in hallways. Girls lean over desks. There are games, gatherings, moments of quiet instruction and supervised play. Nothing announces itself as extraordinary. But the longer you look, the more deliberate everything appears. These are not scenes of life unfolding. They are scenes of life being organized.
Benton’s scholarship makes the construction explicit. Many of these photographs were commissioned by the Joint Distribution Committee and other Jewish philanthropic organizations documenting and in some sense justifying the work they were doing in a new American context. Settlement houses, community centers, schools, youth programs: the infrastructure of a transplanted community. The camera was not wandering. It was directed. It was capturing not just people, but systems. As the historian Hasia Diner observes in her essay for the Benton volume, the Jewish child in New York is the emotional and strategic center of this archive; photographed again and again, by a people who understood that the next generation was the plan.
The contrast is unmistakable when you hold the two bodies of work together. In Europe, Vishniac’s subjects often appear precarious even when dignified: children thin, environments worn, futures uncertain. In New York, the children are sturdy, structured, embedded in institutions designed to carry them forward. They are not simply living Jewish lives. They are being prepared for them.
Preparation, here, is everything.
After the Shoah, Jewish life did not regenerate spontaneously. It was rebuilt — deliberately, systematically, and often quietly — through institutions. Schools transmitted identity. Community centers created belonging. Camps, classrooms, and after-school programs became the mechanisms through which a dispersed and traumatized people ensured that there would be a future at all. Continuity and formation was not treated as an inheritance. It was treated as a responsibility. L’dor v’dor – “from generation to generation” – was not taken or considered a sentimental phrase. It is a theory of formation and resilience, and these photographs are what it looks like in practice.
I closed the book thinking about my son. He is coming into his own now and he loves being Jewish. He asks questions; real ones, the ones that may you pause and think about how to answer, the kind that do not settle for a first answer. He is looking for community in a world that has made plain, in the months since October 7, that it is not always on his side. He wants to know where he fits, who his people are, what tradition is asking of him. He wants to belong to something older and larger than himself.
And I find myself asking a question that Vishniac’s New York children never had to ask on their own behalf, because the adults around them had already answered it. Will the institutions be there? Will there be places where my son can practice being Jewish with other Jews, learn the texts, observe the holidays, form the friendships that last, and develop the habits of mind and values that make a Jewish life possible? Being Jewish is not a solo activity. It is inherently social, communal, structured. It requires spaces, budgets, teachers, clergy, tables, calendars. It requires other people showing up, year after year, for reasons that are not reducible to individual preference.
The data are not encouraging. Pew’s 2020 study of Jewish Americans documented significant declines in synagogue membership and attendance, in denominational identification, in day school enrollment, in attachment to Israel. Jack Wertheimer, writing in Tablet, described non-Orthodox congregations as “hemorrhaging members, aging, merging, and closing.” The institutional map that Vishniac photographed has, in many American cities, thinned considerably. Buildings are sold. Schools consolidate. Federations struggle. The scaffolding that was built in the 1940s has not been uniformly maintained.
And yet the UJA-Federation of New York’s 2025 recontact study — conducted after October 7 — found that a majority of Jewish adults in New York reported increased engagement in some form of Jewish life since the attacks. While not a national study, roughly one in five in New York reported increased participation in specifically communal Jewish life: attending Jewish museums, cultural events, adult education, JCCs, Chabad. Synagogue attendance, by some measures, ticked up. People showed up. They wanted to be with other Jews. They wanted to do Jewish things in Jewish places.
That is the Vishniac parallel made present in his images. In the 1940s, the institutions were built before anyone could be certain who would fill them. Today, the people are arriving and searching despite being wounded over the past few years, and the question is whether the institutions are still there, and strong enough, to receive them. The 1940s answer was construction. The 2020s answer has to be the same. Reconstituting. Reformulating. Rethinking and rebuilding what has atrophied and building anew where the old forms no longer fit and apply.
This is often described as resilience. Resilience is too soft a word in today’s situation. What Vishniac documented, and what this moment demands, is something closer to discipline; the kind that prioritizes long-term survival over short-term ease, that invests in institutions even when the payoff is not immediate, that understands community as something to be maintained rather than merely felt. It is the work of people who do not assume that identity will take care of itself.
I want my son to inherit a Jewish life that is thick rather than thin and authentically rooted rather than curated with a focus on the communal and the individual. I want him to walk into synagogues and schools and camps and community centers that are full, confident, and alive and are places built by people who understood, as Vishniac’s subjects understood, that continuity is not ambient or emerges by fiat. It is constructed.
The Vishniac photographs do not tell us what to build. They do something more useful. They remind us that building is the work, and that the work does not end with one generation. The men and women who commissioned those photographs are gone. The children in them are now old or gone. The institutions they built have carried us this far.
Whether they carry our children further is up to us.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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Trump Says US May Strike Iran Again but That Tehran Wants Deal
People walk past a mural depicting the late leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and the late Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran, Iran. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the United States may need to strike Iran again and that he had been an hour away from ordering an attack before postponing it.
Trump made the comments a day after saying he had paused a planned resumption of hostilities following a new proposal by Tehran to end the US-Israeli war.
“I was an hour away from making the decision to go today,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday.
Iran‘s leaders are begging for a deal, he said, adding that a new US attack would happen in coming days if no agreement was reached.
The United States has been struggling to end the war it began with Israel nearly three months ago. Trump has previously said that a deal with Tehran was close, and similarly threatened heavy strikes on Iran if it did not reach an accord.
The US president is under intense political pressure at home to reach an accord that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz – a key route for global supplies of oil and other commodities. Gas prices remain high and Trump‘s approval rating has plummeted as congressional elections loom in November.
Oil prices settled lower on Tuesday after Vice President JD Vance said Washington and Tehran had made a lot of progress in talks and neither side wanted to see a resumption of the military campaign. “We’re in a pretty good spot here,” he said.
Speaking to reporters at a White House briefing, Vance acknowledged difficulties in negotiating with a fractured Iranian leadership. “It’s not sometimes totally clear what the negotiating position of the team is,” he said, so the US is trying to make its own red lines clear.
He also said one objective of Trump‘s policy is to prevent a nuclear arms race from spreading in the region.
IRAN PROMISES RESPONSE TO ANY NEW ATTACK
In Tehran, Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, said on X that pausing an attack was due to Trump‘s realization that any move against Iran would mean “facing a decisive military response.”
Iranian state media said Tehran‘s latest peace proposal involves ending hostilities on all fronts including Lebanon, the exit of US forces from areas close to Iran, and reparations for destruction caused by the US-Israeli attacks.
Tehran also sought the lifting of sanctions, release of frozen funds, and an end to the US marine blockade, according to Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi as cited by IRNA news agency.
The terms as described in the Iranian reports appeared little changed from Iran‘s previous offer, which Trump rejected last week as “garbage.”
BOTH SIDES ‘CHANGING GOALPOSTS,’ SAYS PAKISTANI SOURCE
Reuters could not determine whether military preparations had been made for strikes that would mark a renewal of the war Trump started in late February.
Trump said on Monday that Washington would be satisfied if it could reach an agreement that prevented Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
A Pakistani source confirmed that Islamabad, which has conveyed messages between the sides since hosting the only round of peace talks last month, had shared the Iranian proposal with Washington.
The sides “keep changing their goalposts,” the Pakistani source said, adding, “We don’t have much time.”
CEASEFIRE MOSTLY HOLDING
The US-Israeli bombing killed thousands of people in Iran before it was suspended in a ceasefire in early April. Israel has killed thousands more and driven hundreds of thousands from their homes in Lebanon, which it invaded in pursuit of the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group.
Iranian strikes on Israel and neighboring Gulf states have killed dozens of people.
The Iran ceasefire has mostly held, although drones have lately been launched from Iraq towards Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, apparently by Iran and its allies.
The US seized an Iran-linked oil tanker in the Indian Ocean overnight, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing three US officials. The tanker, known as the Skywave, was sanctioned by the US in March for its role in transporting Iranian oil, the report said.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said they launched the war to curb Iran‘s support for regional militias, dismantle its nuclear program, destroy its missile capabilities, and create conditions for Iranians to topple their rulers.
But the war has yet to deprive Iran of its stockpile of near-weapons-grade enriched uranium or its ability to threaten neighbors with missiles, drones, and proxy militias.
The Islamic Republic’s clerical leadership, which had faced a mass uprising at the start of the year, withstood the superpower onslaught with no sign of organized opposition.
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Somaliland Says It Will Open an Embassy in Jerusalem, Israel to Reciprocate
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar meets with Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi on Jan. 6, 2026. Photo: Screenshot
Somaliland, a self-declared republic in East Africa, will set up an embassy in Jerusalem soon, its ambassador said on Tuesday, after Israel became the first country to formally recognize it as an independent and sovereign state.
In turn, Israel is expected to set up an embassy in Somaliland‘s capital Hargeisa, Ambassador Mohamed Hagi said in a post on X.
Somaliland, which has claimed independence for decades but remains largely unrecognized, is situated on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden and bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, Ethiopia to the south and west, and Somalia to the south and east. It has sought to break off from Somalia since 1991 and utilized its own passports, currency, military, and law enforcement.
Unlike most states in its region, Somaliland has relative security, regular elections, and a degree of political stability.
Last month, Israel appointed Michael Lotem as its first ambassador to Somaliland, after the two governments formally established full diplomatic relations.
Lotem, who was serving as a non-resident economic ambassador to Africa at the time of his appointment, will now shift to work as a non-resident ambassador to Somaliland. He previously served as Israel’s ambassador to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, and Seychelles, a position he concluded in August.
Israel recognized Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state in December, a move Somalia rejected and termed a “deliberate attack” on its sovereignty.
Over the years, Somalia has rallied international actors against any country recognizing Somaliland.
The former British protectorate hopes that recognition by Israel will encourage other nations to follow suit, increasing its diplomatic heft and access to international markets.
Israel‘s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Tuesday that the opening of the embassy in Jerusalem would be another significant step in strengthening relations with Somaliland. Once opened, the Somaliland embassy would be the eighth embassy in Jerusalem, he said.
Most countries maintain their embassies in Israel in Tel Aviv, although the United States moved its embassy to Jerusalem during President Donald Trump’s first administration. Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and a small number of other countries have also established embassies there.
Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its capital. However, Palestinians seek East Jerusalem, where the holiest sites in Judaism are located, as the capital of a future state.
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Lebanese People Broadly Support Hezbollah’s Disarmament, Peace With Israel, New Poll Finds
Rescuers work at the site of an Israeli strike that took place yesterday, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, May 7, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamad Azakir
In a notable shift in Lebanese public sentiment, a new opinion survey finds growing support for disarming Hezbollah and increased openness to a peace agreement with Israel, even as deep sectarian divisions persist and as the regional landscape remains volatile and uncertain.
According to the poll conducted by the research firm Information International and published on Monday by Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed, a significant share of respondents supports direct negotiations between Lebanese and Israeli officials and a potential peace agreement with the Jewish state, while expressing strong opposition to the continued influence of the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Among the survey’s key findings, respondents were almost evenly split on responsibility for the current conflict, with 33.8 percent attributing blame to Hezbollah and 32.9 percent to Israel.
The newly released survey also found strong overall backing for disarming Hezbollah (58 percent in favor and 34 percent opposed), with support concentrated among Maronite, Orthodox, and Druze respondents, while opposition remained overwhelmingly high among Shiite participants.
By sectarian breakdown, support for curbing Hezbollah’s armed capabilities reached 89 percent among Orthodox Christians, 87 percent among Maronites, 77 percent among Druze, and 70 percent among Sunnis, whereas about 88 percent of Shiite respondents opposed the measure.
Most notably, the survey indicated relatively strong backing for a peace agreement with Israel among non-Shiite communities, with Druze respondents recording the highest support at 84 percent, followed by 77 percent of Maronites and 72 percent of Orthodox Christians, while 92 percent of Shiites opposed such an agreement. A striking 52 percent of Sunnis said they supported a peace deal.
With direct talks between Israeli and Lebanese officials resuming last week, the poll also showed varying levels of support for negotiations, including 78 percent among Maronites, 74 percent among Orthodox respondents, and 72 percent among Druze, compared with 93 percent opposition among Shiite participants.
Despite most Lebanese expressing support for negotiations and a potential peace deal to end the war, normalization with Israel remains unpopular, with only about 30 percent in favor and roughly 59 percent opposed.
By sectarian lines, support for normalization stood at 58 percent among Maronites, 49 percent among Orthodox Christians, and 79 percent among Druze, while opposition reached 94 percent among Shiites and 74 percent among Sunnis.
Last week, Israeli and Lebanese officials held a third round of talks in Washington aimed at advancing the negotiations, even as Hezbollah continued to reject disarmament and oppose any potential peace deal.
Inside Lebanon, fears are mounting that Hezbollah could trigger a new wave of political violence and destabilization as pressure intensifies to dismantle the Iran-backed terrorist group’s military grip.
Lebanese officials have reiterated that the decision to establish a state monopoly over weapons is final, though its implementation remains contingent on securing a broader security arrangement with Israel under US guarantees.
The Iranian proxy has accused Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam of betraying the “resistance” and collaborating with Israel amid ongoing direct bilateral negotiations, branding them “traitors” aligned with foreign interests.
The terrorist group has repeatedly defied international calls to disarm, even threatening protests and civil unrest if the government tries to enforce control over its weapons.
According to a new report from the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), an Israel-based research institute, Hezbollah could once again resort to political assassinations in an effort to block moves perceived as existential threats to the organization and restore its power.
Hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel reignited on March 2, when the terrorist group opened fire in support of Iran two days after the start of the joint US-Israeli military campaign against the Iranian regime.
Since then, Israeli forces have established a “buffer zone” extending into southern Lebanese territory, which officials say is meant to shield northern residents from Hezbollah attacks amid thousands of rockets and drones fired throughout the war.
Even though a US-backed ceasefire has sharply reduced violence, negotiations and prospects for lasting peace remain fragile, with Israeli forces still launching strikes while positioned in southern Lebanon to maintain its buffer zone and dismantle Hezbollah military infrastructure.