For generations, American Jews imagined they could construct a full Jewish life in exile. With thriving synagogues, day schools, cultural institutions, and philanthropic infrastructure, the Diaspora seemed to offer stability, prosperity, and moral standing. Zion, for many, became a symbol or a cause—noble, but optional. But October 7 shattered that illusion. When Jewish blood was spilled with impunity and elite Western institutions met it with equivocation or celebration, it became painfully … [Read more...]

Dear Naama and Leor, You know the stories. You've seen the black-and-white photographs of skeletal bodies and crumpled shoes behind glass. You’ve walked through the Yad Vashem Children’s Memorial, where names echo in the darkness like stars extinguished before their time. You lit candles. You said Never Again. But now, I worry that all we taught you was death. We showed you how Jews died, but not why they lived.We taught you how the world hated Jews, but not why being a Jew is still … [Read more...]

Tikkun olam. Interfaith work? Tikkun olam. Anti-racism? Tikkun olam. Often, these causes were laudable. But when untethered from covenantal identity, they mutated into a form of moral universalism that was no longer recognizably Jewish. As one educator quipped, "If tikkun olam is Judaism, then Greenpeace is a better synagogue." In his polemic To Heal the World?: How the Jewish Left Corrupts Judaism and Endangers Israel, Jonathan Neumann contends that the American Jewish establishment has … [Read more...]

Eighty-one years ago today, the greatest heroes the world has ever seen stormed the beaches of Normandy. They came by sea and sky. They fought across cliffs, hedgerows, and beachheads. And they did so not for conquest, but for conscience. Their mission was not one of expansion, but of liberation. And they knew it. As President Ronald Reagan said on the 40th anniversary of D-Day: “The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all of humanity, … [Read more...]

There are parts of the Torah that uplift the soul—moments of revelation, liberation, and transcendent wisdom. But there are also parts that unsettle us. Passages that feel foreign, archaic, or even ethically troubling. Parshat Nasso contains one of the most jarring of them all: the ritual of the Sotah—the trial of the woman suspected of adultery. To modern eyes, the Sotah ritual reads like a dystopian spectacle: a man suspects his wife of infidelity but lacks evidence. He brings her to the … [Read more...]

Changing your logo isn’t solidarity. It’s performance. Virtue signaling dressed up as courage. And it’s the lowest form of caring—especially when it’s done for groups that refused to stand with us when it mattered most. There was a defining moment this era will never forget.Just hours after the October 7th massacre, BLM Chicago shared an image of a Hamas paraglider with the words: “I stand with Palestine.”No mourning. No grief. No condemnation. Just celebration.They didn’t stand with the … [Read more...]

There are moments that demand more than prayer, more than hashtags, more than carefully worded statements of support or sorrow. There are moments that demand our full presence—physical, moral, and communal. This is one of those moments. Assassination in D.C., Firebombs in Boulder On May 21, 2025, two young Israeli diplomats were assassinated in Washington, D.C. They weren’t soldiers. They weren’t combatants. They were emissaries—representatives of a sovereign state—and they were murdered … [Read more...]

There is one question—heavy, uncomfortable, but unavoidable—that lingers in the aftermath of Boulder: What if someone had been carrying a firearm? How different might that night have been? How much shorter the terror? How much smaller the fire? How much stronger the message that Jewish life is not only sacred—but protected? This is not a call for vengeance. It is a call for vigilance. For decades, we were taught that Jews should not fight. That our role in history was to suffer … [Read more...]

There is a particular kind of heartbreak that does not come from shock—but from recognition. It is the heartbreak of watching a story unfold exactly as you feared it would—step for step, line for line—and being powerless to interrupt its trajectory. It is the grief not of uncertainty, but of prophecy fulfilled. The pain of knowing. And of being right. This week, in Boulder, Colorado, that heartbreak came crashing through the window—almost literally. A group of Jews gathered—not to … [Read more...]

This morning at Shabbat services, I had the privilege of listening to one of our high school students deliver the sermon in our synagogue. She had just returned from a semester-long program in Israel—a formative journey that left its mark not only on her, but on all of us who heard her speak. Her words were beautiful. Her delivery was poised. Her reflections were thoughtful, sincere, and deeply personal. But that wasn’t what moved me most. What stayed with me long after the service ended … [Read more...]