Shaul Magid

Jan 7, 2025 | arcmag.org | Shaul Magid

I admit I only read David Brooks’s most recent confessional after reading Mark Oppenheimer’s response in Arc. I have read similar essays by Brooks in the past, tracing his “journey” from agnostic to believer.

Oct 7, 2024 | arcmag.org | Shaul Magid

The era before the Civil War, Walt Whitman argued, was the “before-times,” suggesting that everything after the Civil War was categorically different. In some way, all days before Oct. 7, 2023, were Israel’s “before-times”; the country now exists in the afterward. Before Oct. 7, Israel was in the throes of one of the most divided moments in its history.

Sep 26, 2024 | religiondispatches.org | Shaul Magid

After listening to a 90-minute comprehensive webinar on campus protests and antisemitism, led by a prominent Hillel rabbi at an elite university, I was shocked that there was no mention of Israel’s war on Gaza that has so far killed tens of thousands of civilians and injured almost 100,000 people. This was not unintentional.

Sep 2, 2024 | jewschool.com | Shaul Magid

We begin where all mourning begins. We say their names: Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Almog Sarusi, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, and Ori Danino. These six young souls had lives to live, people to love, a world to see, brokenness to fix. None of that will happen now. They are the latest victims of a bloodbath that has taken too many lives. How many innocent lives is too many lives? Every innocent life is too many lives. Every. Single. One. But we become numb and thus immune to death.

Aug 25, 2024 | 18forty.org | Steven Gotlib |Shaul Magid

This is the ninth essay of 18Forty’s new “Faith in Reason” series with Rabbi Steven Gotlib, released every month. Sign up for it here, and read the eighth essay here. At first blush, Zionism might seem like a strange topic to cover in this series.