Blog Posts

Fifth in the series "The Two Thousand Year Argument," on what the Jewish people did with exile. Earlier installments are here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 In the standard telling of Jewish history, the Jews leave the Land of Israel when Rome …

Below, @voiceofrabbis presents the "Cliff Notes" version of the letter the Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Aron Teitelbaum, sent to President Trump. "Key quotations" are direct quotes from the letter. The rest is our summary. The letter was two pages long, with…

Fourth in the series "The Two Thousand Year Argument," on what the Jewish people did with exile. Earlier installments are here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The popular picture of Jewish history between Rome and the modern era is a picture of victims. …

Every year, at the end of the Passover Seder, Jewish families around the world say four words together: next year in Jerusalem. The same words close the Yom Kippur service. They are among the most recognizable lines in Judaism, and they are often pr…

The Jewish Zionists Got the Idea of Zionism From the Christians Below we preent the Twitter work of two top scholars: An old thread by Rabbi @yaakov_shapiro, and a brand new video of the history from @_ZachFoster. For a full treatment, see Rab…

Third in the series "The Two Thousand Year Argument," on what the Jewish people did with exile. Earlier installments are here: Part 1 | Part 2 Here is a puzzle worth thinking about. For two thousand years, Jewish communities have been scattered fro…

Australian Supreme Court rules (like every other court in the world should) that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism, is not anti-Jewish, and is a perfectly legitimate expression, held by many, including Jews. Many of those people are clearly not anti…

Second in the series "The Two Thousand Year Argument," on what the Jewish people did with exile. Part 1 In the year 70, Jerusalem was surrounded. The Roman army had encircled the city, the siege had gone on for months, and inside the walls the situ…

First in a new series, "The Two Thousand Year Argument," on what the Jewish people did with exile. Most people carry a picture of Jewish history without ever having chosen it. The picture goes something like this. There were the Jews of the Bible, …

Sixth and final in the series "The Kippah and the Flag," on religious Zionism and how it fits, or does not fit, into the Jewish religion. Earlier installments are here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 This series began with a question as…

Fifth in the series "The Kippah and the Flag," on religious Zionism and how it fits, or does not fit, into the Jewish religion. Earlier installments are here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 The previous article described a doctrine: the teaching…

Fourth in the series "The Kippah and the Flag," on religious Zionism and how it fits, or does not fit, into the Jewish religion. Earlier installments are here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The last article ended with a puzzle. The flag beside the ark, …

Today marks the anniversary of the death of Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, better known as the Satmar Rebbe, one of the most influential Orthodox Jewish leaders of the twentieth century. To much of the outside world (and even among Jews), the Satmar Rebbe …

Third in the series "The Kippah and the Flag," on religious Zionism and how it fits, or does not fit, into the Jewish religion. Earlier installments are here: Part 1 | Part 2 Walk into many Modern Orthodox synagogues in America and you will see, at…

Second in the series "The Kippah and the Flag," on religious Zionism and how it fits, or does not fit, into the Jewish religion. Part 1 is here. When religious Zionism appeared a century ago, the leading Torah authorities of the era saw it while it…

First in a new series, "The Kippah and the Flag," on religious Zionism and how it fits, or does not fit, into the Jewish religion. This publication has spent months arguing one point: Zionism is a modern nationalist movement, born in nineteenth-cen…

New York City is having a very loud summer. In July, Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a video announcing that he had no authority to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu under the International Criminal Court's warrant, calling on the federal government to do it,…

On February 8, 1920, a London newspaper called the Illustrated Sunday Herald published a full-page article by Winston S. Churchill, who was then Britain's Secretary of State for War. The title was "Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul …

The conclusion of the series on Zionism, Judaism, and why the difference matters. Earlier installments are collected here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 Every article in this series has circled one question without qu…

Seventh in a series on Zionism, Judaism, and why the difference matters. Earlier installments are collected here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 A country's money is a small museum of its heroes. Israel's fifty-shekel note carr…

A companion to our series on Zionism, Judaism, and why the difference matters. Yesterday was Tisha B'Av, the fast described in this series' previous article, the day Jews spend on low stools mourning the destroyed Temple. By midday, some three tho…

A Tisha B'Av companion to the series on Zionism, Judaism, and why the difference matters. Wednesday night, in synagogues across the world, the lights will go down. Jews will take off their leather shoes, sit on the floor or on low stools in the pos…

Sixth in a series on Zionism, Judaism, and why the difference matters. Read the earlier parts here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Ask anyone in the world to name one thing about Israel, and there's a fair chance the answer involves the…

Fifth in a series on Zionism, Judaism, and why the difference matters. Read the earlier parts here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 Here is a belief most people would file under "Judaism" without a second thought: God gave the Holy Land to the Je…