Category: Other

History does not unfold in slogans. It decays in them. For nearly a century, “resistance” has been the sacred vocabulary of Middle Eastern politics – a moral alibi for power, a euphemism for paralysis, and, at times, a license for…

Conservatives don’t like “identity politics.” The late John Silber, longtime president of Boston University and a candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in the 1990s, was like that. When he ran for governor, Silber preferred to issue…

The coming decade will be judged by how we digitize trust. That is the simple political economy at the heart of the CBDC versus stablecoin versus tokenized-treasury debate. Each instrument promises to modernize payments, shrink frictions and…

The High Standards of Ancient Scholarship Zevachim 30

Our Gemara on amud beis describes an interlude where the sage Levi asked a question of his master, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, in a particular way that was multivalent. It is hard to get into the…

There is a grammar to creation that speaks in mirrors. “In the image and likeness” is not a photograph; it is a pattern that repeats across scales: what is below has an analogue above, and the likeness is not in matter but in relation. If…

What a moment of profound joy for Israel and the Jewish people worldwide as we stand united in celebration—the war in Gaza has ended, and the long-awaited return of our hostages is set for this coming Monday.

For over two grueling years,…

In this episode I introduce a new haggadah with a new format.

The Eternal Jew’s Tale
A Pesakh Montage, The Crystal Haggadah

Going out from Egypt, having broken from the grip of the common ethos…

mere grains of sand on a beach that…

The absence of the lulav and etrog on Shabbat during Sukkot is a glaring change in our observance during this festival. It is noteworthy that it is a rabbinic modification: by Torah law, the lulav should be taken, even on Shabbat (on the…

Coming home is the beginning of repair, not the end of harm. When adult hostages are released, the headline moment—footsteps over a threshold, a door finally closing on the night—conceals the long, ordinary work that follows. Recovery…

The past two years have opened my eyes to the definition of Left versus Right.

In 2023, as I was reading the Guardian (paying for subscription), watching Channel 4 News and a member of the Green Party, I thought I was OK.

If…