Lili Ben Ami: The Israeli tent protests successfully changed the discourse to focus on welfare, education, medicine, and social justice. The protest translated economic issues, such as the inability to purchase an apartment, into an accessible social agenda. … More »
Start Composing
Shaul Kelner: Songs embody and encapsulate the experience of a social movement. Even after a movement recedes into the mists of history, its songs remain as spores. … More »
Crippling God’s Plan
Tomer Persico: An exploration of the Israeli settler movement: A messianic vision’s weakness lies in the very thing that allows it to generate so much hope: its unabashed and uncompromising confidence. … More »
The Many Movements of Chabad
Maya Balakirsky Katz: Chabad has replaced the mid-century focus on Diaspora Zionism with a proudly religious diasporism. Chabad consciously used modern media to construct a broad social network, binding its devotees to God, to their rebbe, to each other, and to their public. … More »
Should Washington Promote Middle-East Democracy?
Matthew RJ Brodsky: Generally speaking, the countries of the Middle East do not possess the preconditions for a successful democracy — namely, a vibrant civil society, state institutions, a strong middle class, respect for the rule of law, concepts of individual liberty, and an independent judiciary. … More »
Jews and Their Isms: A Convergence of Two Historical Moments
Eddy Portnoy The number of isms to which Jews attached themselves during the first decades of the 20th century was quite remarkable: bundism, communism, yiddishism, zionism, diaspora nationalism, socialism, trade unionism, and territorialism. Some Jews were drawn to a movement’s political orientation, while others made choices based on a group’s sports club or library, or … More »
The Zionist Movement: A ‘Sh’ma’ Roundtable
Is Zionism re-emerging as a central concept for the next generation of American Jews? Over the past two decades, Zionism as a movement to rally Jews and explain the meaning and significance of the State of Israel has diminished. Recently, however, a growing number of young Jewish leaders in the United States and Israel are re-embracing the term. Below, … More »
Julian Voloj
“Occupy Wall Street” Photography has long been a means to capture not only a moment in time but also a message and a movement. The following photographs are by Julian Voloj, who immigrated to the United States from Muenster, Germany, by way of Brussels in October 2003, who documented the Occupy Wall Street movement in … More »
NiSh’ma - Social Movements
“The world is too dangerous to live in — not because of the people who do evil, but because of the people who sit and let it happen.” — Albert Einstein Since the Holocaust, Jews the world over have asked: How could the people of Europe have allowed the extermination of 6 million Jews? We … More »