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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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80 Years After the Holocaust, Did Antisemitism Disappear? Or Did Anti-Zionism Replace It?
A German and Israeli flag fly, on the day Chancellor Friedrich Merz meets with Israeli President Isaac Herzog for talks, in Berlin, Germany, May 12, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Liesa Johannssen
There is a comforting narrative circulating in Western discourse. It insists that the surge of anti-Israel activism we see today is nothing more than political engagement. We are told it is about policy disagreements, about borders, about governments and human rights. We are assured it has nothing to do with Jews as Jews.
Yet over and over again, the façade cracks. Beneath the slogans and hashtags, something much older surfaces. What presents itself as principled opposition to a state too often reveals itself as hostility toward a people.
For centuries, Jews have been blamed for calamities that had nothing to do with them. During the Black Death in medieval Europe, Jewish communities were accused of poisoning wells and spreading plague. These lies triggered massacres. In times of disease and social instability, fear sought an outlet and found it in the Jewish minority.
The pattern did not end there. Blood libels claimed that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals. Jews were portrayed as shadowy financiers manipulating global markets, engineering wars, and controlling governments. These were not fringe ideas whispered in dark corners. They were preached from pulpits, embedded in political rhetoric, and woven into cultural narratives.
The consequences were catastrophic. The expulsions from European kingdoms. The pogroms that swept across Eastern Europe and parts of the Middle East all the way up until the 1900s. The 1929 massacre in Hebron, where Jews were slaughtered in their homes. And ultimately the Holocaust, orchestrated by the Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler, in which six million Jews were systematically murdered. Each era insisted it was responding to some new threat. Each era recycled ancient accusations.
Many antisemites now claim they only oppose Israel — but are we really supposed to believe that 80 years after 1/3 of every Jew on Earth was murdered, that antisemitism has disappeared and this is all about Israel?
Modern terrorism continued the pattern. At the 1972 Munich Olympics, members of the Israeli team were murdered in cold blood. In 1985, during the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro, a Jewish passenger was singled out and killed. In 1976, Jewish hostages were separated from others in Entebbe before a dramatic rescue operation. And on October 7, 2023, Israeli civilians were massacred in their homes, children were abducted, and elderly people were dragged into Gaza by Hamas. Once again, Jews were targeted not for what they had done as individuals, but for who they were.
Each time, the world proclaims never again. Each time, hatred finds new language.
That’s why most “anti-Zionism” is just antisemitic logic repackaged for the digital age.
The intellectual dishonesty extends further. Marginal sects such as Neturei Karta are frequently showcased as the authentic voice of Judaism because they oppose the State of Israel. This tiny, fringe group does not represent mainstream Jewish communities in Israel or the Diaspora. Yet their images are amplified to suggest that “real Jews” reject Jewish self determination. It is not an honest engagement with Jewish diversity. It is a strategy to legitimize hostility.
In online spaces, the pattern is unmistakable. Comment sections filled with recycled tropes about Jewish control of media, finance, and politics are everywhere. Every geopolitical development is reframed as evidence of a hidden Jewish hand. Emotional accusations drown out factual context. In the age of algorithms, outrage spreads faster than correction. A sensational claim travels further than a careful explanation.
None of this means that Israel is beyond criticism. But there is a difference between criticism and much of what is happening now.
The State of Israel was established after centuries in which Jews lacked sovereignty and paid for that vulnerability with blood. It emerged in the aftermath of the Holocaust, when the absence of refuge proved fatal. To reduce its existence to colonial ambition is to erase Jewish history and the lived reality of exile, persecution, and statelessness.
Antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism is not diminishing. It is intensifying across university campuses, in activist movements, and in mainstream conversation. The vocabulary may sound modern, but the underlying message echoes the past. Jews are uniquely malevolent. Jews are collectively responsible. Jews are the problem.
The antidote is not censorship but clarity. Historical literacy matters. Facts matter. Calling out antisemitic tropes when they appear, even when wrapped in fashionable language, is not an attempt to silence dissent. It is a defense of truth and moral consistency.
The lesson of history is neither abstract nor distant. When antisemitism is trivialized or excused, it spreads. When it is confronted with moral seriousness and factual rigor, it loses legitimacy. If we are sincere in our commitment to a world where Jews are not scapegoats for every crisis, then we must recognize that anti-Zionism too often serves as the latest vessel for the oldest hatred.
The responsibility to say so belongs to all of us.
Sabine Sterk is the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.
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Israel, AIPAC Take Center Stage in Competitive US Congressional Primary
Aug. 12, 2025, Chicago, Illinois, US: Daniel Biss, mayor of Evanston, Illinois, attends a rally at Federal Plaza in Chicago after the announcement that the Trump administration has unilaterally ended the collective bargaining agreement with federal unions. Photo: Chicago Tribune via ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Leading candidates in a hotly contested open-seat Democratic primary for US Congress are dueling over support for Israel and the country’s largest pro-Israel lobbying group, which have become key focal points of the race.
Tensions have been simmering for months but escalated after a super PAC known as Elect Chicago Women — which is reportedly supported by donors tied to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — began airing its first attack ad in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District last weekend. The ad accused progressive Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss of being “willing to say anything to get elected.”
Elect Chicago Women has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on broadcast television attacking Biss and more than $2 million boosting moderate state Sen. Laura Fine, according to federal filings.
The political action committee has not publicly disclosed its donors ahead of the primary, fueling complaints from Biss and other candidates about covert influence in the contest.
In a statement on Sunday, the Biss campaign stated that voters “won’t be fooled by these slimy dark money ads, and they won’t allow right-wing special interests to pick our next member of Congress.”
The next day, Biss released an attack ad targeting Fine for receiving money from supporters of AIPAC, which Biss’s campaign described as a “Trump-aligned, pro-Netanyahu” group, referring to US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The ad also said that AIPAC was aligned with “MAGA,” or Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.
AIPAC is a prominent lobbying group that seeks to foster bipartisan support for the US-Israel alliance. Despite making bipartisanship a key tenet of its work, AIPAC has in recent years become a favorite target of left-wing, Democratic activists and politicians.
Before the latest dueling ads, the clash in Illinois’ 9th District spilled into a candidate forum hosted by the Pink Poster Club last week in Evanston, where contenders were asked directly whether they accept contributions from AIPAC or longtime AIPAC supporters.
Fine was the only candidate on stage to say yes. She clarified that she has not received money directly from AIPAC itself but has accepted donations from individuals who support the group, as well as from some Republican donors. AIPAC has not formally endorsed any candidates in the race.
Nonetheless, Biss seized on Fine’s distinction, arguing that Democratic voters should question why right-leaning and pro-Israel special-interest donors are investing heavily in a Democratic primary. He has framed the super PAC spending as an attempt by outside forces to purchase the seat and shape the district’s representation on foreign policy.
Fine was also the sole candidate last week to respond “yes” to supporting continued military assistance for Israel.
Other rivals echoed concerns about transparency and influence, but it was Biss who most forcefully made policy toward Israel and AIPAC-aligned spending a centerpiece of his critique.
Fine has pushed back, saying the attacks mischaracterize both her record and her motivations. She points to her legislative work in Springfield on issues such as abortion rights, health-care access, and environmental protection, arguing that her support is grounded in her progressive credentials.
She has also emphasized her longstanding ties to the local Jewish community, a significant constituency in the district, and said backing from pro-Israel donors reflects shared values, not outside control. Supporters argue that strong US–Israel relations are a mainstream Democratic position and that accepting donations from pro-Israel individuals does not conflict with progressive priorities.
Fine and her campaign have denied any coordination with outside groups and contend that Biss is unfairly singling out Jewish and pro-Israel donors for political gain. Moreover, Fine has taken aim at Biss for his supposed connections with conservative donors.
“Daniel Biss has relied on Republican donors for years and voters are sick of politicians who say whatever it takes to win an election,” Fine’s campaign said in a statement.
At last week’s forum, Fine said she was “sick and tired of being Dan-splained,” noting that Biss met with AIPAC officials multiple times before rebuking their involvement in the race.
“When they said, ‘We don’t trust you,’ he changed his tune again. And that’s not a surprise, because he’ll tell one group one thing and another group another,” Fine said.
Another candidate in the race, Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old Palestinian-American social media personality who has repeatedly accused Israel of so-called “genocide” in Gaza, also slammed Biss for previously meeting with AIPAC officials.
Biss currently leads the primary with 24 percent support among voters, according to a new poll commissioned by the Evanston RoundTable and conducted by Public Policy Polling, a firm affiliated with the Democratic Party. He was followed by Abughazaleh at 17 percent and Fine at 16 percent, with nearly a quarter of voters still undecided.
In the open competition to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Fine has sought to establish herself as the most Israel-friendly candidate, stressing the importance of Israel’s self-defense and the importance of continuing the American alliance with the Jewish state.
Biss, who is Jewish, has taken a harsher stance against Israel, issuing sharpened criticisms of the Jewish state’s conduct in Gaza. Though Biss has stated that he supports Israel and has expressed desire for continuing the alliance between Washington and Jerusalem, he has condemned the Netanyahu government and called for increased restrictions on US military aid. However, the mayor also spent large stretches of his childhood in Israel and has expressed a generally positive sentiment toward the nation and its people.
Nonetheless, Biss has promised not to accept any funding or support from AIPAC, accusing the prominent lobbying group of having “MAGA-aligned donors” and arguing that accepting its support would force him to “compromise” his progressive values.
Last month, US Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, penned a letter demanding answers from Biss, accusing him of failing to protect Jewish students during a pro-Hamas, anti-Israel encampment at Northwestern University that, lawmakers say, devolved into widespread antisemitic harassment and violence. Northwestern’s campus is located in Evanston.
Illinois’ 9th District, long represented by progressive stalwarts, is heavily Democratic and includes Evanston and Chicago’s North Side. In such a deep-blue seat, the winner of the March primary will be the overwhelming favorite to win the general election.
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IDF Base Sports Center Destroyed in Oct. 7 Attack Reopens as Part of Multi-Million Dollar Rebuilding Project
Inside the reconstructed sports complex at the Israel Defense Forces’ Re’im Base during its reopening ceremony on Feb. 24, 2026. Photo: FIDF
A sports center and gym at the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) base in Re’im, Israel, reopened on Tuesday after being infiltrated on Oct. 7, 2023, by Hamas-led terrorists, who used the facility to plan further attacks against Israelis before it was ultimately destroyed.
The sports center at the IDF base in Re’im, which serves as the military’s Gaza Division headquarters, was reconstructed and reopened as part of a NIS 23 million ($7.44 million) project to restore facilities destroyed during the deadly massacre across southern Israel. The facility was rebuilt from the ground up and now includes a state-of-the-art fitness gym and indoor basketball arena. A mezuzah was placed on the doorpost of the center during its reopening ceremony on Tuesday and a commemorative plaque was unveiled.
A project to make the base fully operational again was led by Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) and the Association for Israel’s Soldiers (AFIS). The sports center’s original construction was funded by donors from FIDF’s New York Tristate Area Real Estate Affinity Group, who united after the Oct. 7 attack to launch its rebuilding. Marty Berger, co-chair of the group, spoke at the center’s reopening on Tuesday.
“I remember when we first built this gym and facility and coming back over the years to see how much they meant to you,” he told IDF solders and FIDF supporters in attendance. “When we returned in December 2023, just two months after Oct. 7, we saw the damage and the bullet holes throughout the gym and fitness center. It was heartbreaking, but we also saw how the Gaza Division re-emerged ready to defend Israel with strength and determination and we vowed to rebuild it. To see this place rebuilt and to have played a small part in restoring it is deeply humbling.”
Hamas-led terrorists infiltrated the IDF base on Oct. 7, 2023, and used the sports center as their own center for operations, where they planned further attacks on IDF soldiers and their families on base. When IDF special forces closed in and tried to regain control of the base, the terrorists used the gym as the site for their final stand-off. The IDF ultimately ordered an airstrike against the terrorists, which completely destroyed the building. Many of the military base’s structures were also damaged in the Oct. 7 attack and considered unusable.
“Rehabilitating [the] Re’im base is a true mission, stemming from the inseparable bond between the Jewish community in the United States and IDF soldiers,” said FIDF CEO Maj. Gen. (Res.) Nadav Padan. “The reconstruction of the sports center and other welfare facilities symbolizes the determination to restore routine, stability, and a place that enables soldiers to continue their mission with a sense of security and pride. We stand alongside the soldiers of the Gaza Division today and in the future, with full and ongoing commitment.”
“The completion of this rehabilitation project is not only the rebuilding of structures but also symbolizes the end of a complex period and the beginning of a new path for the soldiers and commanders at Re’im base,” added AFIS CEO Col. (Res.) Shari Nechmias-Carmel. “It is an expression of life, spirit, and hope returning to the base, and of our commitment to providing those who serve there with a dignified environment that is strengthening and secure.”
The NIS 23 million reconstruction project also includes the restoration of the military base’s synagogue, library, health clinic, and other structures damaged during the Oct. 7 attack.