Uncategorized
Queer yeshiva to publish first-ever collection of Jewish legal opinions written by and for trans Jews
(JTA) — In the midst of writing a 13-page analysis of a complex area of Jewish law, Rabbi Xava De Cordova found something she wasn’t expecting to see in the medieval-era sources: flexibility.
De Cordova is transgender and had long wondered whether she could feel a sense of belonging while studying reams of rabbinic writings on halacha, or Jewish law, which stretch back thousands of years and often prescribe different practices for men and women.
The laws of ritual purity, for example, prescribe specific behaviors for women on the assumption that they all menstruate. Trans women do not. De Cordova said that gap and others had her thinking, “I don’t really know if I can find a place for myself in this literature.”
But after digging into Jewish texts on the topic, De Cordova realized she’d sold the sages short: Medieval European rabbis were asking many of the same questions she was — and their answers reflected real-world complexity.
“I just found that the rabbis and the early halachic authorities’ understanding of niddah was so much more conceptual and vague and fluctuating than I ever realized before I started this particular work,” De Cordova said, using the Hebrew term for purity laws. Her conclusion: “Wow, there’s so much space for me within this literature.”
De Cordova’s realization is one of many that a dozen Jewish scholars and rabbis have had over the last year as they have scoured Jewish texts for guidance on how transgender Jews can adapt traditional rituals to their lived experience. Now, the group is preparing to release a batch of their essays, analyses of Jewish law called teshuvot, in hopes that they can inform the experiences of trans Jews who seek to live in accordance with traditional Jewish law.
The release of the essays comes at a time when lawmakers in dozens of states are targeting trans people and their rights, in some cases instigating fights that have heavily involved rabbis and their families.
In that climate, writing trans Jews into Jewish tradition “becomes an act of resistance because it’s about celebrating lives that are being demeaned and celebrating people who are being dehumanized in the public sphere,” said Rabbi Becky Silverstein, co-director of the Trans Halakha Project at Svara, the yeshiva founded in Chicago two decades ago to serve the queer community. The dozen rabbis and scholars are based at Svara and collectively form the Teshuva Writing Project.
Among the questions they have tackled: How could a trans man converting to Judaism have a bris, required for male converts? Is the removal of body tissue after gender-affirming surgery a ritual matter, given Jewish legal requirements for burying body parts? And is there a Jewish obligation, in certain cases, to undergo gender transition?
Just how widely their answers will be consumed and taken into account is a question. Most Jews who consciously adhere to halacha throughout their daily lives are Orthodox, and live in communities that either reject trans Jews or are reckoning with whether and how to accept them. Non-Orthodox Jewish denominations have made efforts to embrace trans Jews, but halacha is less often the starting point for most of their members. The Reform movement, the largest in the United States, expressly rejects halacha as binding.
Still, a growing number of Jews and Jewish communities strive to be inclusive while staying rooted in Jewish law and tradition. There are also a growing number of trans Jews who are connected to traditional communities, or who want to live in accordance with Jewish law.
“I think individual trans Jews who are not part of communities could use these teshuvot to guide their own decision-making,” said Silverstein, who was ordained at the pluralistic Hebrew College seminary. “We live in a time of religious autonomy in Jewish life, and where trans Jews actually are hungry for connection to tradition. And so they could use these teshuvot to help inform their own conversations.”
Organizations and initiatives such as the Jewish LGBTQ group Keshet; Torah Queeries, a collection of queer commentaries on the Bible; and TransTorah.org have created rituals, readings, blessings and customs for trans Jews, and Svara runs a Queer Talmud Camp as well as intensive Jewish study programs throughout the year. But until now, no collection of Jewish legal opinions has been published by and for trans people.
“Halacha has to be informed by the real lived experiences of the people about whom it is legislating,” said Laynie Soloman, who helps lead Svara and holds the title of associate rosh yeshiva, in an approach that they said the group had adopted from the disability advocacy community. “That is a fundamental truth about halacha that we are holding as a collective and taking seriously in the way we are authoring these teshuvot.”
The teshuvot will be published later this month, and follow a long tradition of rabbis setting halachic precedent by answering questions from their followers. Those answers are traditionally based on an analysis of rabbinic texts throughout history. They can address questions ranging from whether smoking cigarettes is permissible to the particulars of making a kitchen kosher for Passover.
Some Jewish legal questions tackled by the group at Svara had not previously been answered, such as how to mark conversion for someone who is male but does not have a penis. In other cases, accepted Jewish law pertaining to gender can be painful for those who are nonbinary or trans, either because the answer is not clear or because the law does not match up with contemporary understandings that gender and sex are distinct.
“[Those are] areas where trans people are sort of most likely to either feel lost themselves or be interrogated by their community. … And so they’re sort of these urgent halachic needs,” said De Cordova, who was privately ordained by a rabbi from the Renewal Judaism movement. “And 99.9% of the literature about them so far has been written by cis people, about us.”
De Cordova concluded that trans women are obligated in niddah, the ritual purity laws. In her teshuva, she provides several approaches to emulate the complicated counting cycle that tallies the days a woman is considered ritually impure following menstruation. She suggests using a seven- and 11-day cycle originally proposed by Maimonides, the 12th-century scholar and philosopher. De Cordova also suggests that the imposition of a cycle not based in biology means ancient and medieval rabbis had some understanding of womanhood as a social construct.
“There’s many cases in which the rabbis sort of choose to orient niddah around their understanding of women, which I would call the social construction of womanhood by rabbis, rather than observable physical phenomenon or actual women’s experience,” she said.
For De Cordova, the experience of writing about niddah provided her with new insights about some of the oldest Jewish legal texts on the subject.
“They’re flexible enough and sort of responsive enough that I can really find a lot of freedom and space in working with them,” she said of the ancient sources. “And that was just a really sort of wonderful and freeing transition to go through.”
Last year, the Conservative Movement approved new language for calling up a nonbinary person to various Torah honors. The rabbis behind the opinion consulted with groups serving LGBTQ Jews and synagogues centered on them, but acknowledged that they were imperfect authors.
“When my coauthors and I published the teshuva, we wrote in it that we are all cisgender rabbis and that we hope that, increasingly, halachic work dealing with nonbinary and trans and queer Jewish life and identity and practice will… come from queer rabbis and scholars themselves,” said Guy Austrian, the rabbi of the Fort Tryon Jewish Center, a synagogue in upper Manhattan. “And I think the publication of the first batch of teshuvot from the Trans Halakha Project shows that that process is underway, and I think that that can only be a good thing for the Jewish world.”
Scholars at Svara, the queer yeshiva based in Chicago, have served the Jewish LGBTQ community for two decades and are now creating the first written set of Jewish law by and for trans Jews. (Jess Benjamin)
Adding to the question-and-answer tradition of Jewish legal opinions means trans Jews will now have new texts to guide their religious practice, Silverstein said. Trans Jews, the writers of the opinions acknowledge, already have their own ways of performing Jewish ritual that accords with their lived experience. But they say that when it comes to Jewish law, informal custom without a sourced legal opinion is not enough.
“I want cis[gender] clergy to realize that there are resources written by and for trans people that they can turn to when they’re trying to help a member of their congregation,” De Cordova said.
The authors of the legal opinions applied to be part of the collective and come from a religiously pluralistic group, ranging in affiliation from Orthodox to Conservative to Jewish Renewal. They have varying expectations for how far-reaching the impact of the new legal opinions will be.
Mike Moskowitz, an Orthodox rabbi and the scholar-in-residence for trans and queer Jewish studies at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, which serves the LGBTQ community, said the teshuvot could provide a model for observant Jews who are also trans.
“I think it’s significant in modeling what an informed conversation can look like, which hasn’t really happened in Orthodox publications,” said Moskowitz, who was not part of the collective that composed the teshuvot on trans Jews’ practice. “I hope this models what can be done in other movements. What’s been tricky is that every movement has a different understanding of what halacha means.”
Even within Orthodoxy, conflicting opinions already exist, in a reflection of how halacha has always operated. For example, Talia Avrahami, a transgender Orthodox woman, follows the opinion of the late Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, known as the Tzitz Eliezer, who ruled that a trans woman who undergoes gender affirmation surgery is a woman according to Jewish law. But Avrahami was told she could not sit in the women’s section of her synagogue, because the rabbi who the synagogue follows does not accept Waldenberg’s opinion. Months earlier, Avrahami had also been asked to leave her teaching job at an Orthodox day school after students and parents learned that she was transgender.
Avrahami declined to comment on the new teshuvot, citing restrictions set by her current employer.
Silverstein says some Conservative rabbis have expressed interest in using the opinions to guide practice in their own congregations. But he is less sure if they will be adopted in the Orthodox community, which is the target audience for most traditional literature on Jewish law.
“When it comes to the Orthodox community, I’m not sure I am bold enough to dream that these teshuvot specifically are going to be adopted,” Silverstein said. “I’m not even sure I know what that means. But it is my hope that they will permeate throughout the Jewish community, at least through the Modern Orthodox community.”
The scope of the opinions written by the collective extends beyond the trans community. The first batch of answers, for example, includes an opinion about how to increase physical accessibility to a mikvah, ritual baths used to fulfill some requirements of Jewish law.
“Judaism thrives and Torah thrives when people are bringing their life experiences to the text and asking their questions of the text,” Silverstein said. “That’s how new Torah is uncovered in the world. And that’s how Judaism and Torah has stayed alive through so much of Jewish history.”
—
The post Queer yeshiva to publish first-ever collection of Jewish legal opinions written by and for trans Jews appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
The Palestinian Authority Condemns Iran’s Attacks on Arab States — But Not Israel
Emergency personnel work at the site of an Iranian strike, after Iran launched missile barrages following attacks by the US and Israel on Saturday, in Beit Shemesh, Israel, March 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Other than a few informative reports, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is almost silent about the Israeli-American war with Iran.
So far, the PA has limited itself to condemning Iran’s attacks on other Arab states and requesting “an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers and for a session of the UN Security Council.”
The PA has neither condemned the Israeli-American attack on Iran, nor has it said anything positive about the Iranian missiles launched against Israel:
The State of Palestine strongly condemned the Iranian attacks on several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq, stressing its full rejection of any violation of their sovereignty or aggression against them by any party.
It described the attacks as a blatant violation of the UN Charter and principles of international law…
It also reaffirmed its consistent position against resorting to violence and war, calling for dialogue as the means to resolve disputes … and for adherence to international law to strengthen regional and international peace and security.
President Mahmoud Abbas called for an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers and for a session of the UN Security Council to address the serious challenges facing the region, its countries, and their sovereignty. [emphasis added]
[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, Feb. 28, 2026]
Vice President of the State of Palestine Hussein Al-Sheikh on Saturday reaffirmed Palestine’s rejection and condemnation of the Iranian attacks on several Arab sister states … and conveyed Palestine’s solidarity with the Arab states and support for any measures they deem appropriate in response.
Al-Sheikh stressed that the State of Palestine and its leadership firmly reject any violation of the sovereignty of Arab states or aggression against them by any party, describing the attacks as a blatant violation of the UN Charter and the principles of international law.
[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, Feb. 28, 2026]
Although the PA has not openly applauded the joint US and Israeli attack on Iran, there is reason to believe they silently appreciate the development.
Palestinian Media Watch has exposed that the PA blamed Iran for making Hamas launch the devastating Oct. 7 war to “serve its Iranian masters” and accused Iran of supporting Hamas to “destroy the Palestinian national project,” thereby enabling it to replace the PLO as “the sole representative of the Palestinian people”:
PLO National Council member Muwaffaq Matar: “There is no clearer proof [than Iranian leader Khamenei’s speech] of Hamas’ subordination to this Iranian regime. In this speech there is nothing new for us, because we have already understood how much this regime controls Hamas, has given it its blessing, supported it, and aided it to destroy the Palestinian national project completely, so that it [Hamas] and also its partners who follow Iran will be the artificial alternative to the PLO.”
[Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Facebook page, June 3, 2024]
This claim was reiterated recently by PLO Central Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily, Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul:
[Hamas] began to move according to the direction of the wind, based on the Muslim Brotherhood’s principle of taqiyya. Nothing is constant for [Hamas] except to continue serving as a paid pawn in the hands of the enemies, in order to sabotage the national project, dissolve it, incite against the legitimate leadership. [emphasis added]
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 18, 2026]
Following the Israeli-American attack, former spokesman of the PA Security Forces Adnan Al-Damiri even mocked both Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Iran.
Al-Damiri prophesized that the Iranian people won’t reach for their freedom made possible by Netanyahu (and Trump) but will continue to “support the regime.” Iran’s attack on several neighboring Arab states, many of which host US military bases, was ridiculed by Al-Damiri as “stupidity and malice”:
Posted text: “The Iranian people are not a plaything to accede to [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu, even if it is against the regime. Netanyahu’s appeal to the Iranian people will fail, and the people will set out to support the regime. The war will last a long time to complete the mission of toppling the [Iranian] fundamentalist regime…
Iran, out of stupidity and malice, attacked its [Arab] neighbors who opposed the war. It weakened itself by directly involving its neighbors.
This will open the possibility of ground military activity from the territories of its neighbors and with their participation. The war will last weeks, perhaps months.”
[Former Official Spokesman of the PA Security Forces Adnan Al-Damiri, Facebook page, Feb. 28, 2026]
So far, only the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has openly mourned the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with a poster and text calling the Israeli-American attack “a cowardly assassination operation committed by the Zionist and American treachery.”
Note: On June 3, 2024, then Iranian leader Khamenei gave a speech in which he praised Hamas’ terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, stating that:
An army that claimed to be one of the strongest armies in the world has been defeated inside its own land. Who has defeated it? Was it a powerful government? No, it was defeated by Resistance groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. It was defeated by these [groups]. This is what Al-Aqsa Flood did.
He neither mentioned the PA nor the PLO at all but only the “Resistance” and the “Palestinian people.”
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this story first appeared.
Uncategorized
Purim and Lion’s Roar: From Sinai to Shushan to Sovereignty
A woman holds a poster with the picture of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as people gather after Khamenei was killed in Israeli and U.S. strikes on Saturday, in Tehran, Iran, March 1, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
I am writing this from Israel. Since roughly 8:10 a.m. on Saturday morning, my family and I — including my grandchildren — have been moving in and out of our apartment’s mamad (safe room) as sirens sound and alerts flash across our phones.
This is not symbolic. For more than two and a half years, it has been part of our routine, largely because an Islamist tyranny that controls modern Persia has made clear its intention to destroy the world’s only Jewish state and confront what it calls the “decadent West.”
Purim begins this Monday night. It is one of the most joyful holidays on the Jewish calendar. We commemorate events roughly 2,300 years ago, when the Jews of the Persian Empire thwarted the genocidal plan of Haman, a Persian vizier who sought to eliminate every Jew under ancient Persian rule.
The connection between then and now is not only rhetorical. It is theological.
The Jewish sages distinguish between two moments of covenant in Jewish history. At Mount Sinai, the Jewish people accepted the Torah amid overwhelming miracles and revelation. The Midrash (the rabbinic interpretive tradition) describes G-d holding the mountain over them “like a barrel.” The Talmud asks whether a covenant accepted under such circumstances can truly be considered voluntary.
Centuries later, in Shushan (the royal capital of the Persian Empire), the Jewish people accepted the covenant again — this time by choice. Megillat Esther (the Book of Esther) states, “The Jews upheld and accepted.” The Talmud understands this as a reaffirmation of Sinai, but now without thunder, seas splitting, plagues, or other spectacular and clearly divine miracles.
A royal Persian decree had set a date for annihilation. The Jews organized, fasted, lobbied the king, and prepared to defend themselves. According to our sages, it was at that moment that the covenant became fully embraced.
Sinai represents a covenant formed through revelation. Purim represents a covenant embraced through responsibility. That distinction matters.
The Book of Esther never mentions G-d explicitly. Unlike the Exodus narrative in the Passover Haggadah, which foregrounds Divine intervention, the Book of Esther reads like statecraft. A Persian official secures authority to eliminate a minority population. The decree circulates through an imperial bureaucracy. The Jewish community must decide how to respond.
“Gather the Jews,” Mordechai tells Esther. This is strategic, not mythical, language.
The Jews of Shushan survived because they took responsibility for their fate and they acted.
That pattern has a modern parallel.
For decades, the Iranian regime has funded, armed, and directed groups that target Israelis and Americans — whom it labels the “little Satan” and the “big Satan.” From Beirut to Buenos Aires, from sustained support for Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah, Tehran has made proxy warfare against America and Israel a central instrument of state policy.
At the same time, Iran has advanced uranium enrichment and ballistic missile programs while engaging in negotiations designed to preserve those capabilities.
Days before Purim this year, Israel and the United States launched Operation Lion’s Roar, referred to in Washington as Epic Fury.
Iranian leadership assumed hesitation would prevail — that Western debate would slow or negate response, that deterrence would erode, and that proxy pressure, escalating threats, and negotiations designed to buy time would delay decisive action. They were wrong. Once again, Israel directly responded to threats against it.
History offers important perspective.
In 1948, roughly 650,000 Jews declared independence, while five Arab armies responded by trying to destroy it, including the British-trained and armed Arab Legion. The new state lacked air power, heavy artillery, and strategic depth. Many predicted its total annihilation. But Israel fought, won the war, and secured its independence.
In 1967, Gamal Abdel Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran, expelled UN forces from Sinai, and massed Soviet-armed Egyptian divisions along Israel’s border. Syrian artillery shelled the north. Jordanian forces controlled the high ground overlooking central Israel. At its narrowest point, the country measured nine miles across, with a population of barely 2.5 million facing neighboring states with a combined population of roughly 40 million.
Israelis feared catastrophe; thousands of graves were prepared. Six days later, Israel won the war and dramatically altered the map of the Middle East.
In October 1973, on Yom Kippur, fewer than 200 Israeli tanks faced roughly 1,400 Syrian tanks on the Golan Heights. Reinforcements were hours away. A breakthrough would have exposed the Galilee and major civilian centers. The line held. Syrian armored forces suffered heavy losses.
In Sinai during that same war, Egypt’s surprise assault initially overwhelmed Israeli positions. Weeks later, Israeli forces crossed the Suez Canal, encircled Egypt’s Third Army, and advanced to within roughly sixty miles of Cairo.
In 2024, Israeli intelligence penetrated Hezbollah’s communications networks, disrupted command structures, and eliminated most of its senior leadership. Analysts who insisted Hezbollah was effectively unbeatable without catastrophic Israeli losses were forced to watch its capabilities steadily collapse.
None of these episodes suspended natural law. They reflected decisions made under tremendous pressure. And this is where the story of Purim becomes essential: when open miracles are absent, G-d works through human agency.
For centuries in exile, Jewish communities survived, often barely, without sovereignty. Waiting was frequently the only option. But Purim established a different principle: divine providence does not remove human agency; it operates through it.
Political Zionism functioned in that mode. No prophet guaranteed success. No spectacular miracle cleared its path. Zionist leaders organized congresses, negotiated with empires, purchased land, built institutions, and formed defense forces. They acted.
Sovereignty eliminates the option of passivity. It requires decisions, risk, and accountability.
As I write this, the sirens keep sounding. As usual, Israelis will gather our children and move into reinforced spaces. We will follow Home Front Command instructions. When the all-clear comes, we will return to our lives as citizens of a sovereign Jewish state.
Some clearly prefer the image of Jews as permanent victims — admired or to some degree tolerated because they are powerless. Purim rejects that model. When we gather, mobilize, defend, and take responsibility — whether on the Golan in 1973, in intelligence and military operations against Hezbollah, or in confronting nuclear and missile threats from Tehran — we act in the spirit clarified in Shushan.
Jewish survival in the modern age rests on agency — on the willingness to participate in history rather than endure it. May this be the last Purim in which a tyrannical regime in Persia threatens the Jewish people and the free world. Next year (and hopefully much sooner), we hope Iran will be free of its oppressors — and at peace with Israel.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.
Uncategorized
If the Ayatollahs Are Overthrown, What Is Next for Israel and Iran?
Israel and Iran flags are seen in this illustration taken June 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
If the Iranian regime does fall — what happens next? Will Iran return to the peaceful history of its past, or will more chaos ensue?
History offers both warning and hope.
In ancient Persia under King Ahasuerus, a decree was issued by Haman to annihilate the Jewish people. Haman’s hatred was not casual prejudice. It was genocidal policy. Yet through courage, strategy, and unity, Queen Esther exposed the plot. The Jews were granted the right to defend themselves and survived what was meant to be their destruction. Purim became a celebration not only of survival, but of clarity in the face of existential threat.
Israel’s modern reality is not ancient Persia, but the echoes are unmistakable. Since 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has built its regional strategy around encircling Israel with armed proxies. Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen have all received Iranian funding, training, and weaponry. Tehran’s leaders have repeatedly called for Israel’s elimination while advancing a nuclear program that has alarmed the international community for decades.
A regime change in Iran would therefore reverberate far beyond Tehran. But we must be realistic. Regimes can fall quickly. Narratives do not.
Decades of indoctrination inside Iran have portrayed Israel as a cosmic enemy. Beyond Iran, global discourse has increasingly cast Israel as uniquely malevolent, often divorced from context. Social media accelerates outrage while compressing history into slogans. Complex security dilemmas are flattened into caricature. Millions form hardened opinions about a country they have never visited, about a conflict they have never studied in depth.
A post revolutionary Iran would not automatically translate into pro-Israel sentiment. Prejudice rarely evaporates with a leadership change. If peace between the two countries is to be more than a pause between conflicts, it must be built deliberately.
So what are the realistic pathways?
First, intellectual honesty about history. The Jewish connection to the land of Israel is ancient and continuous. Archaeology, historical texts, and liturgy testify to a people whose national and spiritual identity is rooted in Jerusalem and the broader land. Recognizing Jewish indigeneity reframes the debate from colonial accusation to national self determination. Education systems across the region would need to replace erasure with acknowledgment. That is not a concession. It is a prerequisite for coexistence.
Second, regional integration based on shared interests. The Abraham Accords demonstrated that longstanding hostility is not immutable. Economic cooperation, technological exchange, and security coordination between Israel and several Arab states have already produced tangible benefits. Trade has expanded. Tourism has grown. Joint ventures in renewable energy, water technology, and cyber defense are underway. A future Iran that abandons revolutionary maximalism could, in theory, plug into the same architecture of mutual benefit.
Third, economic normalization as a stabilizing force. Iran possesses immense human capital, natural resources, and strategic geography. Israel is a global leader in innovation, from agricultural technology to medical research and cybersecurity. Interdependence raises the cost of conflict. When prosperity is tied to stability, the incentive structure shifts away from confrontation.
Fourth, people to people engagement. Hatred thrives in abstraction. It weakens in proximity. Academic exchanges, cultural dialogue, and civil society partnerships can humanize what propaganda has dehumanized. The Iranian people have repeatedly demonstrated courage in protesting repression. Many distinguish between political opposition to their rulers and personal animosity toward Jews. Those spaces of nuance must be widened.
And yet, realism demands humility. Human nature contains rivalry as well as compassion. The 20th century, despite unprecedented technological progress, produced unparalleled destruction. The hope that humanity will transcend conflict entirely has so far proven elusive. Peace may not be an eternal state. It may be episodic and fragile.
That does not render it meaningless.
Israel does not aspire to endless war. It aspires to secure sovereignty in its ancestral homeland. It aspires to raise children without air raid sirens and to innovate without existential distraction.
If change comes in Tehran, it will open a door. Whether that door leads to durable coexistence depends on choices made not only by leaders, but by societies willing to confront myths and abandon absolutism.
Peace may never be permanent. But it can be extended. It can be strengthened. And in a region too accustomed to despair, even incremental light after darkness is worth striving for.
Sabine Sterk is the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.