My friend Leslie Mirchin told me once that this is the best moment in Jewish history. I said that couldn’t be true. Everything is going wrong. Israel is a mess. In America, Judaism means less than ever to ever-more people. In France, Jews are fleeing violent anti-Semitism of a sort that I thought had disappeared….
She’s known for her trademark headband wig, an unlikely uniform on Israeli prime-time news. Sivan Rahav Meir: Tall, rectangular glasses, modestly dressed, Meir is often either conducting exclusive interviews — Sara Netanyahu, President Reuven Rivlin, the late rabbi Ovadia Yosef — or offering her own unwavering commentary on her night show. Born and raised in…
This essay is part of our ongoing series, Outside the Bubble: Class and Inequality in the Jewish Community. It explores the class divides in Jewish communities of all denominations, and the financial struggles belonging to these communities can incur. Please email your thoughts and essays to [email protected]. I know I am privileged. I know –…
This week, we found out from sociologist Steven Cohen that the worlds of Reform and Conservative Judaism are disappearing into blackness — almost literally. Their scant replacement numbers are being demographically dwarfed by the masses of Orthodox children, and a generation down the line the American Jewish population will have drastically shifted its religious affiliation….
They may never get around to writing the Great American Novel, but in the meantime if people need to get a sense of what it’s like to live in this country, they could do a lot worse than to have a close reading of the films of Frederick Wiseman. Since the late 1960s, the indefatigable…
A recent article in these pages by sociologist Steven Cohen and others concluded, based on the Pew Research Center’s findings, that in 40 years, far fewer American Jews will identify as Conservative and Reform, and far more will identify as Orthodox. While the authors wrote of this as a “jarring” trend, it is hardly surprising…
A Pulitzer Prize-winning author and academic turned diplomat, Samantha Power is best known for her efforts to bring her work highlighting genocide prevention onto the national and global stage. Power is now writing about her experiences from a perch at Harvard University, after concluding in January a tumultuous four years as the United States ambassador…
In the next 20-40 years, we will witness dramatic changes in the American Jewish population. The changes won’t be in overall size, but in how many Jews are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and nondenominational. In 2013, the Pew Research Center’s study of Jewish Americans revealed much about the future of American Jewry. We recently plotted the…
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