JewishGPS

Can a tent hold everything and still be a safe haven?

In our effort to be inclusive, have we forgotten that Jewish identity requires boundaries?

When we talk about the “Jewish tent,” we often emphasize its warmth, openness, and moral imperative to welcome difference. That impulse matters. But it is not the whole story.

Judaism is not just a feeling of belonging. It is a structure, held up by core anchors such as collective memory, peoplehood, land, text, tradition, and ritual.

When those anchors are untethered or gradually chipped away in the name of inclusion, especially by ideologies that ultimately undermine the tent itself, such as anti‑Zionism, a hard question emerges:

Can those who reject the foundational premises of Jewish peoplehood still claim refuge inside the tent?

My latest piece explores why anti‑Zionism is not merely critique, but rather a departure from the shared foundations that hold the Jewish people together.

Read the full perspective here:

👉 https://jewishgps.online/2026/04/24/when-the-storm-comes/

Sharing this today, as Yom HaZikaron emerges into Yom Ha’atzmaut, as a unique way to reflect on Israel's story and consider Israel's future.

I’ve spent the last few years turning a series of pivotal moments in Israel’s history over and over in my head. I keep coming back to the idea that if things had gone even slightly differently at those moments, the trajectory of the last 75+ years might have been drastically altered.

This piece grew out of that sustained reflection. I explore a series of “What If(s)”—not as an exercise in hindsight, but as a framework for thinking about responsibility, repair, and the role of education in breaking cycles that can feel inevitable.

🔗 💭 https://jewishgps.online/2026/04/21/what-ifs/

As someone who works at the intersection of education, systems, and values, I’m increasingly convinced that the first step forward isn’t policy. It’s narrative. And the second is restorative approaches to repair.

I know this is a complex and often painful topic. I’m sharing it in the spirit of serious engagement, not easy agreement.

What if better dialogue isn’t enough?

Over the past few years, we’ve invested heavily in teaching people how to disagree better — and that work matters. But dialogue alone doesn’t rebuild trust, repair relationships, or strengthen civic life.

In my latest blog, “An Ecosystem of Social Change: Why We Need to Disagree Better AND Serve Together,” I explore a framework that pairs dialogue with shared responsibility. Drawing on Jewish wisdom, service‑learning research, and decades of practitioner experience, I argue that trust is built and repair begins, not just through conversation, but through doing meaningful work together.

If you’re thinking about leadership, civic engagement, education, or how we move forward in a polarized moment, I hope the framework introduced in this piece adds something useful to the conversation.

🔗 Read the full post here: https://jewishgps.online/2026/04/12/an-ecosystem-of-social-change-why-we-need-to-disagree-better-and-serve-together/

I’d love to hear what resonates and where you think this work still needs to grow.

Is it a media bias issue or a PR issue? Or Both?

With roughly 30,000+ missile/projectile attacks on Israel since 10/7, why don’t the images from Israel look even remotely as devastating as the ones from Gaza?

The difference isn’t accidental.

It reflects the systems and the choices made long before the moment of crisis.

We tend to read images of war as if they tell the whole story.

They don’t.

What you have been seeing from both places is the result of what existed (or didn't) before the moment of impact and what happened upon onset of the crisis.

My latest blog explains what the world sees — and what it misses.

When Israel Is at War: What the World Sees — and What It Misses Jewish Peoplehood Becomes Infrastructure When Crisis Hits and the Safety Net Activates The image represents a very difficult reality. A woman embraces Chana, an evacuee from Beit Shemesh. Her home …

New essay: Oh God! or Oh, God?

After publishing my recent piece on what we mean when we say “secular Jew,” I received a flood of thoughtful responses. What became clear very quickly is that many people were not reacting to a sociological label. They were reacting to a lived tension.

Again and again, people described Jewish lives that are deeply ethical, communal, historically rooted, and emotionally attached, yet routinely flattened into the word secular because they do not believe in God.

In the new essay, I look at:
• why belief has become an informal gatekeeper in modern Jewish life
• how Jewish texts themselves preserve multiple “God languages”
• what my research with Jewish teens revealed about how young people understand Jewish identity
• why wrestling with God might actually be the most Jewish posture of all

If you’ve ever wrestled with the language of belief in Jewish life, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

https://jewishgps.online/2026/03/05/oh-god-or-oh-god/

Parashat Tetzaveh / Shabbat Zachor

Tetzaveh calls for the ner tamid to be tended constantly. Community, like the ner tamid, must be tended to stay alight.

On Shabbat Zachor we are asked to remember. Memory keeps a community alert, aware, and anchored.

Communal leadership is not spotlight but stewardship. At different moments, different kinds of leaders are needed to hold us together.

This week’s question: How are you helping keep the light on in your community?

Parashat Mishpatim

In Mishpatim, the people say na’aseh v’nishma, “we will do and then we will understand.”

I am drawn to this ordering. It reminds me that meaning often follows action. Commitment comes first. Clarity comes later.

In my work and life, I often learn by doing, by showing up, and by engaging before everything makes sense.

This week’s question: Where might understanding come only after you are willing to act?

Shabbat Shalom

What makes an object holy?

Is it the material?
The history?
The blessing?
The intention?

In Judaism, holiness is rarely about inherent magic. It is about designation. About human beings choosing to elevate something. Choosing to mark it as sacred.

For this week’s JewishGPS blog, I wrote about the quiet, profound power of making holy objects — and what that act reveals about identity and agency.

If holiness can be created, it means we are participants in it.

Read here:
https://jewishgps.online/2026/02/10/the-magic-of-making-holy-objects/

I’d love to hear: What object in your life feels holy to you?

In honor of my grandfather’s 68th yahrtzeit today, I published a long-form essay grounded in Jewish ethics, education, and lived experience: A Jewish Case for Gun Restraint, Regulation, and Responsibility.

The piece weaves together family history, classroom learning, Jewish legal texts, and contemporary debates inside Jewish communal spaces about guns, security, and fear.

My conclusion is not ideological. It is ethical. Jewish wisdom does not glorify weapons. It regulates them in service of preserving life.

https://jewishgps.online/2026/01/29/a-jewish-case-for-gun-restraint-regulation-and-responsibility/

A recent article in eJewishPhilanthropy about the Oklahoma Jewish charter school controversy prompted me to write a new blog piece.

It raised a deeper concern for me about what happens when Jews, even with good intentions, help blur the line between religion and government in public education. At a moment when Christian nationalism is reshaping schools, book bans are erasing Jewish history, and First Amendment enforcement often lags behind violations, precedent matters.

This is not abstract. It is about safety, democracy, and whether minority communities retain the ability to say “this is not OK.”

➡️ Read here: https://jewishgps.online/2026/01/21/when-jews-bring-down-awall-of-safety/

I am intentionally sharing my newest blog on MLK weekend.

For generations, Jews understood justice work as part of our religious and moral inheritance. We learned it in moments like Selma, when Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel spoke of praying with his feet.

Over the past two years, many Jews who spent decades showing up for justice have found themselves pushed out of spaces they helped build.

This piece is not about abandoning progressive values. It is about what happens when justice spaces become unsafe for Jews, and how we hold both justice and survival without surrendering either.

If you have felt politically or morally homeless lately, you are not alone.

🔗 https://jewishgps.online/2026/01/18/standing-withwhile-standing-apart/