Chevruta is a column named for the traditional method of Jewish study, in which a pair of students analyzes a religious text together. In each installment, Jewish Currents will match leftist thinkers and organizers with a rabbi or Torah scholar. The activists will bring an urgent question that arises in their own work; the Torah scholar will lead them in exploring their question through Jewish text. By routing contemporary political questions through traditional religious sources, we aim to address the most urgent ethical and spiritual problems confronting the left. Each column will include a ..read more

Last week, the NYPD—called in by Columbia University President Minouche Shafik—arrested 108 Columbia and Barnard students, who had set up a Gaza solidarity encampment on a lawn in the center of campus. The group of students was subsequently suspended, and those at Barnard were evicted from campus housing. Over the following days, others reestablished the encampment—continuing the call for the university to disclose their investments and divest from Israeli companies, to boycott Israeli academic institutions, and to keep cops off campus, among other demands. In the week since the encampment was ..read more

In recent months, a buzzy new pair of articles on the specter of rising “Israel-related” antisemitism have arrived in The Atlantic. One, by Franklin Foer, heralds the end of the “golden age of American Jews,” while another, by Theo Baker, details the current climate on Stanford’s campus. Though similar stories have circulated in Jewish communal outlets for years, these two longform pieces demonstrate how the subject has also taken center-stage in liberal media since October 7th, against a backdrop of increased scrutiny on college campuses. The media handwringing has been accompanied by politic ..read more

In The Ally—a new play at the Public Theater by Itamar Moses—an Israeli American adjunct professor is forced to confront the limits of his solidarity when his decision to support a Black student seeking justice for the police murder of a cousin becomes entangled with questions of Israel and Palestine. Though set before October 7th, the play is undoubtedly “ripped from the headlines,” taking up questions of campus antisemitism and liberal Jewish discomfort with left politics, and giving every “side” in the argument—hardline Zionists, Palestinians, young Jewish leftists, Black activists, and Jew ..read more

In the public sphere, the discursive battle over Israel and Palestine often comes down to language, with one’s willingness to use individual words and phrases like “apartheid” and “settler colonialism,” or “the right to exist” and “human shields,” usually offering a pretty reliable indication of their worldview. Since October 7th, mainstream and independent media alike have been faced with endless choices about how to represent the unfolding events: Which words are used to describe the Hamas attacks and which ones are used to describe those of the Israeli military, for example, and what does i ..read more

On January 22nd, India’s far-right prime minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Ram Mandir, a gargantuan new temple dedicated to the Hindu god Ram, in an event that marked the most consequential victory for the Hindu nationalist movement in its 100-year history. The temple has been erected in the exact spot where a centuries-old mosque, the Babri Masjid, stood until Hindutva supporters violently destroyed it in 1992. The attack on the Masjid catalyzed anti-Muslim mass violence across the country, and in the years since, Hindu nationalist, or Hindutva, groups like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sang ..read more

In recent years, religious Jewish communities around the world have turned increasingly toward the right. In Israel, the overwhelmingly right-wing ideology of Religious Zionism is on the rise, and it’s often seen as unusual to be both religious and left-wing. But there's also a growing movement of observant Jews offering an alternative vision for religious life that centers Jewish values of justice, compassion, and freedom.  In this episode of On the Nose, Maya Rosen speaks with Mikhael Manekin, Nechumi Yaffe, and Dvir Warshavsky, three activists with the new Israeli religious left-wing g ..read more

The US labor movement has had an exciting few years. Labor unions are gaining popularity among the general public as workers organize at new shops from Amazon to Starbucks to Harvard. Perhaps most critically, legacy unions are experiencing a democratic upsurge, with both the Teamsters and the United Auto Workers (UAW) recently electing militant leaders. This revival has also been expanding labor’s purview, with unions increasingly taking on demands that exceed “bread-and-butter” concerns about wages and benefits.  But the renaissance in labor is now being tested, as rank-and-file workers ..read more

Many months ago, we solicited questions from you, our listeners, for our first-ever mailbag episode. The result was a wide-ranging conversation that wandered from the serious (Torah study) to the relatively frivolous (HBO’s Girls). We planned to release the episode in early October, but shelved it in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel and amid Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza. We’re sharing it now as a piece of bonus holiday content because many of your questions still feel relevant—even if we might have answered them differently from within this moment. In this episode, editor-in-chief Arie ..read more

In this episode, Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart speaks with two political analysts from Gaza living abroad, Khalil Sayegh and Muhammad Shehada. Sayegh and Shehada discuss what it was like growing up under Hamas rule, how Hamas governs, the motivations behind the October 7th attack, and what’s next for Hamas in Palestinian politics. Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”  Links and Further Reading: Khalil Sayegh and Muhammad Shehada on X The Palestinian Center for Policy Survey and ..read more