For many, many years, on Friday nights, my mother-in-law Becky would walk into our Los Angeles home carrying her yellow Dutch oven. The heavy pot was tightly wrapped in a towel and inside sat her red rice. She would look at Neil and say, with quiet pride, “El arroz salió uno por uno,” meaning the […]
Continue Reading
On his first day in office, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani moved to revoke the city’s adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism. The decision was framed as a procedural correction—an act of neutrality, even principle. In reality, it was far more revealing: a declaration that Jew-hatred would again be treated as negotiable, conditional, […]
Continue Reading
SOS Iran is a network created to help activists inside Iran connect and operate securely when communication is risky or disrupted. Participants are assigned an SOS number—an internal identifier used to protect identities while allowing organizers to verify a person’s role, route messages or footage through trusted channels, and track reports without exposing names or […]
Continue Reading
In our zeal to fight the demon of Jew-hatred, Jews have become masters of speaking to themselves with in-depth analyses. It’s a natural instinct: We can’t fix a problem until we understand it, so let’s analyze it to death. Meanwhile, no one seems to notice that the more we’ve analyzed, the more antisemitism has gone […]
Continue Reading
“We must learn to recognize that as long as we lack a home of our own, such as the other nations have, we must resign forever the noble hope of becoming the equals of our fellow men,” wrote Leon Pinsker in “Auto-Emancipation” in 1882, a text often regarded as the opening salvo of the Zionist […]
Continue Reading
US President Donald Trump warned that Washington would respond militarily if Iranian authorities killed demonstrators, as anti-regime protests spread across multiple cities in Iran and have already become deadly. In a post on Truth Social, President Trump said the United States was prepared to act if protesters were harmed by the Iranian government. “If Iran […]
Continue Reading
During a reunion at Habonim Dror’s Camp Tavor in Chicago, a woman approached Michelle Azar and told her she had a fascinating life story. Azar jokingly replied, “I have a show about it – ‘From Baghdad to Brooklyn.’” At the time, the actress and singer, who is married to Rabbi Jonathan Aaron, didn’t actually have […]
Continue Reading
Do you dip apples and challah in honey for a sweet new calendar year? Maybe it’s time to start. As Jews, we get to celebrate New Years twice! Whether you kick off the year in the fall, during the High Holy Days, or via the traditional calendar in January — or both — each comes […]
Continue Reading
As 2025 comes to a close, the last couple of months have been full of gratitude, celebration, and moments that remind me why I love this work. This season, I reflected on milestones big and small — my birthday, Brave-ish turning two, Chanukah and the joy of sharing stories with friends, family, and readers across […]
Continue Reading
There’s something about hating things that makes me feel alive. I’ll see a post on X about, say, another nasty case of Jew-hatred, and I’ll get all riled up. It makes me feel like doing something. I feel useful. Sometimes I’ll even write a column. This attachment to negative stuff is not something I’m proud […]
Continue Reading
