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Sep 19, 2024 | 
ejewishphilanthropy.com | Yehuda Kurtzer
North American Jews need more rabbis. This has been true for some time, but this moment in Jewish history demands more spiritual, educational and pastoral leadership from rabbis than any other in recent memory. This call for reinforcements is not an indictment of the many great rabbis we already have in our midst; they know better than most how lonely their work is, and that having more creative leaders alongside them would bolster them in their holy undertaking of building vibrant Jewish life.
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Apr 26, 2024 | 
jewishreviewofbooks.com | Yehuda Kurtzer |Akiva Schick |Hillel Halkin |Asa Kasher
Tikkun Olam 84 minutes In December 2023, I found myself in the basement of a Yale dorm, watching a new documentary about young American Jews. Israelism follows Simone Zimmerman and a young man identified only as “Eitan” as they narrate their journey from being passionate advocates for Israel and, in Eitan’s case, an IDF soldier, to outspoken critics of the country.
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Jan 30, 2024 | 
jweekly.com | Yehuda Kurtzer |David Wilensky
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox. At the outset of the war in Gaza — a war that Israel did not seek, a war triggered by a heinous attack by Hamas — I argued in the Forward that our responsibility as Jews was to define the war as a “just war” and to commit to support Israel’s fight.
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Jan 29, 2024 | 
forward.com | Yehuda Kurtzer
At the outset of the war in Gaza - a war that Israel did not seek, a war triggered by a heinous attack by Hamas - I in the Forward that our responsibility as Jews was to define the war as a "just war" and to commit to support Israel's fight.
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Nov 30, 2023 | 
newsbreak.com | Yehuda Kurtzer
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Oct 19, 2023 | 
jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com | Yehuda Kurtzer
When unspeakable tragedy hits the Jewish people, we turn to memory — we ask not just, “what happened?” We also ask: “What does this remind us of?”Maybe refusing to heal from the tragedies of the past is pathological; maybe we are holding on too tight. Maybe it is epigenetic. Mostly, however, I see it as a coping mechanism developed over time, an interpretive strategy we use both to preserve our past and to create continuity.
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Oct 13, 2023 | 
jpost.com | Yehuda Kurtzer
When unspeakable tragedy hits the Jewish people, we turn to memory — we ask not just, “what happened?” We also ask: “What does this remind us of?”Maybe refusing to heal from the tragedies of the past is pathological; maybe we are holding on too tight. Maybe it is epigenetic. Mostly, however, I see it as a coping mechanism developed over time, an interpretive strategy we use both to preserve our past and to create continuity.
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Oct 7, 2023 | 
blogs.timesofisrael.com | Yehuda Kurtzer
JTA — When unspeakable tragedy hits the Jewish people, we turn to memory — we ask not just, “what happened?” We also ask: “What does this remind us of?”Maybe refusing to heal from the tragedies of the past is pathological; maybe we are holding on too tight. Maybe it is epigenetic. Mostly, however, I see it as a coping mechanism developed over time, an interpretive strategy we use both to preserve our past and to create continuity.
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May 23, 2023 | 
hartman.org.il | Yehuda Kurtzer |Sandra Diamond Fox
Every summer, thousands of American Jewish teenagers leave their homes to spend weeks making trouble and memories in what might be their favorite place in the world: summer camp. But Jewish camp isn’t just fun, games and reenactments of Aliya Bet; it’s a place for Jewish kids to learn about history, ritual and belonging, an opportunity for teens to understand themselves as part of the Jewish story.
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Mar 8, 2023 | 
jewishaz.com | Yehuda Kurtzer
My synagogue sent out a cautiously anxious email Feb. 23 about an event coming, a neo-Nazi “Day of Hate.”Sometime around 1990, in response to local neo-Nazi activity, some Jews from my community decided to “fight back.” I don’t know whether they were members of the militant Jewish Defense League, or perhaps just sympathetic to a JDL-style approach. When our local Jewish newspaper covered the story, it ran on its front cover a full-page photo of a kid from my Orthodox Jewish high school.
