Welcome to the website of Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility. Sh’ma invites some of the most thoughtful writers of contemporary Judaism to create a “conversation-in print” each month. Our topics raise critical questions about communal issues, Jewish education, synagogues, personal theology, philanthropy, Israel, community transformation, Jewish arts and culture, Judaism and the Diaspora, and much more. Regular features include book reviews, a practical Jewish ethics column, and Nish’ma, a simulated page of contemporary Jewish Talmud. Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility publishes ten issues a year, from September through June.

The Founding Editor of Sh’ma, Eugene Borowitz, teaches at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. In founding the journal in 1970, Borowitz aimed at “a vigorous dialectic of opinion… If we could learn to listen to one another, particularly when we are in fundamental disagreement, we might thereby give a sign of how society can become community.” Borowitz created the journal to cross religious, cultural, and political boundaries. Decades later we cross those boundaries while also fiercely maintaining a passion for inclusiveness and diversity— a unique home without walls for contemporary Jews to courageously think out loud about social, religious, political, cultural, and communal issues.

Today, Sh’ma is edited by Susan Berrin. Susan is also the Editor of two landmark Jewish anthologies, Celebrating the New Moon: A Rosh Chodesh Anthology and A Heart of Wisdom: Making the Jewish Journey from Midlife through the Elder Years. She lectures frequently on Rosh Chodesh, as well as Jewish midlife and elder issues. She has contributed essays to several books, most recently, Praise Her Works: Conversations with Biblical Women , The Women’s Passover Companion: Women’s Reflections on the Festival of Freedom, In Women’s Hands: Letters from Mothers to their Children, and Jewish Mothers Tell Their Stories : Acts of Love and Courage .

Sh’ma is published by the Sh’ma Institute, an independent nonprofit established by Lippman Kanfer Family Foundation, with the support of FJC: A Foundation of Philanthropic Funds.

To join the Sh’ma conversation, stay informed, and subscribe to the print journal, email shma@cambeywest.com.