Amanda Unvarnished

Social justice” is a foundational biblical value. But its ancient meaning has little to do with the modern catchphrases and ideologies that are part of contemporary social justice discourse, like socialism or “equality of outcomes.” Instead, the Bible gives us a much more complex vision of “justice and righteousness” to describe the ideal social order. […]

There is no one “kosher” Jewish approach to social justice, just as there is no single authorized Jewish response to any of the challenges we humans encounter and create for ourselves. Jewish texts contain a multitude of opinions, enough to support the presuppositions and political persuasions that almost any seeker could bring to them. One […]

As a wave of anti-Jewish violence tore through New York in December 2019, Christian clergy across Boston gathered to compose a powerful statement, asserting their shared responsibility to combat antisemitism. Ministers of all races and denominations drafted the statement collaboratively, inviting a handful of their closest Jewish partners to provide feedback to ensure that the […]

To commemorate the first day of Black History Month this year, 170 Hollywood industry leaders announced the formation of the Black-Jewish Entertainment Alliance, aiming to “bring our two communities together in solidarity” against racism and antisemitism. This initiative harked back to the era when black and Jewish groups coalesced with labor, churches, and liberals to […]

To say that Freedom for Humanity left little to the imagination risks giving the impression that its creator nonetheless possessed some talent for subtlety.  Painted on a wall in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets in 2012, the mural depicted six finely attired men seated around a Monopoly board resting atop a passel of […]

Imagine you’ve just been accepted to college. You open your welcome packet. It contains the bestseller all first-year students are expected to read: Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility. You flip to a random page and read, “Only whites can be racist.” You flip to another page where you read that to deny being racist is itself […]

As with so many of the world’s big ideas, social justice — the term denotes the fair distribution of wealth, power, opportunity, and status within society — is a concept with deep roots in Jewish tradition and, at times, disquieting consequences in Jewish life. Take many of the most prominent contemporary social justice movements, and they are shot through […]

One cannot get it out of one’s head. The young Israeli at the music festival, trapped, awaiting capture and worse from the Hamas murderers, sending two brief sentences back to his family: “I love you” and “I’m sorry.” It’s the “I’m sorry” that brings you to your knees, because what he was being sorry for […]

We were up late celebrating Jewish life at Columbia the night before the attacks. Our Chabad House hosted one of its largest-ever Shabbat and holiday dinners for Shemini Atzeret, a Jewish festival. It was an overflow crowd. So many Jews from the United States and Israel — and everywhere in between — came out to dance at this autumn […]

There’s a war on. But Israelis are not the only ones in the fight for morality and civilization. If you are reading this from Israel, you are in this war in a way that is clear. We wish you strength, courage, and love. When people ask me whether I have family in Israel — implying, why else […]

As I write, the news is of an impending Israeli invasion of Gaza in response to the horrors of Hamas’s brutal wave of terror. How, everyone asks, could this have happened? Ayaan Hirsi Ali observes that Israel was taken by surprise partly because it was distracted by internal discord. But another distraction she notes is […]

After witnessing Hamas’s gleeful butchery of Jews, we will see pictures from Gaza of tremendous destruction in the days to come. Many of us will be called upon to speak. What might we say? The Torah is a realistic book. It does not hide the reality of human depravity and cruelty. In its pages you […]

My first war in Israel was the 2006 Lebanon war. Since then, I have had an allergic reaction to a number of attitudes that crop up every time Israel is involved in a conflict. The first is the tendency of international observers, both friendly and unfriendly to Israel, to offer the country advice on how […]

What words of Torah can reflect our profound sorrow in this moment? Each of us will forever remember the moment when we first heard about the October 7 massacres. I had just arrived at the community I lead, the Downtown Minyan, my mind filled with plans for that night’s Simhat Torah celebrations. I am shomeret […]

Contemporary military ethics are built around one central principle: Keep noncombatants out of warfare as much as possible. This principle imposes two major rules on fighting parties: Do not target noncombatants, and do not entangle your troops with the civilian population, so that it remains clear who are combatants and who are noncombatants. The 1977 […]

The laughs have been few and far between lately. Maybe that is why it felt so good when Leon Cooperman, the billionaire investor, blurted out on live television that “these kids at the colleges have shit for brains.” Mr. Cooperman, the first in his family to graduate college, took a big step toward achieving the […]

University administrators seem to be surprised that they have been incubating some of the leading and most active antisemites in America. In their reactions to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and then to subsequent outrages against Jewish students and campus communities, they seem mystified. Institutions so devoted to “safety,” “inclusion,” and “diversity” have […]

In the aftermath of Hamas’s brutal October 7 massacre, a number of chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and other student groups issued statements praising as “resistance” Hamas’s killing of babies, raping of women, and seizing of hostages — all of which violate the laws of war, not to mention basic human norms. We share […]