Sh'ma Journal: A Journal of Jewish Ideas

An independent “think tank” of diverse ideas and conversations online and in print to incubate issues of significance to Jewish community conversations.

This month's conversation:

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A Bolt from the Blue
Shai Held
The surest way to misunderstand the Hebrew Bible is to insist upon a stark binary distinction between the particular and the universal. The Torah begins by looking through a wide ... MORE »
Are Jews ‘Chosen’?
Aryeh Bernstein, Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi
In an exchange of letters, Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi and Aryeh Bernstein discuss how their thinking about chosenness has changed over time — whether chosenness, today, is a notion that is ... MORE »
Bridging the Near and the Far
Jordan Namerow, Ruth Messinger
Serving on New York’s City Council in 1986, I was the floor manager for a civil rights bill to protect gays and lesbians in employment, housing, and public accommodations. The ... MORE »
Chosenness
admin
If Jews are the chosen people, what have we been chosen for? What does choseness demand of us? If we alone were chosen to be brought into the covenant with God, what happens ... MORE »

Ethics Column
America’s Shameful Debt Trap
Ari Hart
It’s almost half over! When the shmita year, a once in seven-year opportunity to transform our world, began this past Rosh Hashanah, rabbis, educators, and communities across the Jewish world were ... MORE »
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NiSh'ma
Ari Moffic, Dalit Kaplan, Eric Solomon, Ethan Weg
“To me, O Israelites, you are just like the Ethiopians,” declares the Lord. “True, I brought Israel up from the land of Egypt, but also the Philistines from Caphtor, and ... MORE »