Chai Lights
Week of March 16th
After a week off from battling the flu, your intrepid news cultivator is back to bring you all the Jew news Chai Lights for this week.
FEATURE STORY
Everybody Wants to Run This Play: Zionism as Template for National Renewal What if Zionism is less a Jewish grievance and more a technology the whole Western world desperately needs?
Alana Newhouse’s January cover essay for Tablet is one of those rare pieces that reframes a supposedly settled argument from the ground up. Rather than defending Zionism as a Jewish right, she asks why Zionism has become the thing everyone is fighting about and concludes the answer has far more to do with the West’s identity crisis than with Israel. She argues that Zionism, having fulfilled its promise for the Jews, now functions as a technology for national renewal that others could, conceivably, use themselves.
A must-read for anyone trying to make sense of the cultural moment.
(Tablet Magazine, January 2026)
What few on either side focus on is that almost everyone else in the West is losing, or giving up, their own privileges of self-determination — which is what's making it possible to imagine that Israel is somehow getting away with what no one else can
-Alana Newhouse, Zionism for Everyone
RELIGION
Your Seder Is in Two Weeks. Here Is How to Actually Make It Meaningful. Passover begins April 1 this year, which means the clock is ticking.
With Passover two weeks out, My Jewish Learning’s comprehensive seder planning guide is the right thing to put in front of your listeners right now. Hosting a Passover seder is a deeply meaningful opportunity to participate in one of Judaism’s most ancient and significant traditions, and the guide covers everything from choosing the right Haggadah to setting the table to thinking through how to tell the story of the Exodus in a way that resonates with every guest around the table. It also includes a reminder that the Haggadah itself does not actually tell the Exodus story for you, leaving the table to do that work. Worth a read before you start cleaning out the chametz.
(My Jewish Learning, ongoing / updated for 2026)
CULTURE & IDENTITY
Closer Than You Think (and Farther Than We’d Like) Peoplehood is not a WhatsApp group.
Mijal Bitton reflects on three recent moments that crystallized the growing distance between American and Israeli Jewish life, from coalition proposals about egalitarian prayer at the Kotel to the unmediated reality of following Israelis on social media, and argues that presence, not posts, is what actually sustains the bonds of peoplehood. Her prescription is not guilt but genuine, sustained connection. Characteristically wise, and a useful corrective for anyone who thinks “solidarity” mostly happens online.
Dues-Free, Tri-Mechitza, Orthodox: How a South Philly Shul Is Defying Every Expectation The fastest-growing shul in American Jewish life is in a neighborhood that had no synagogues for decades.
The South Philadelphia Shtiebel, founded in 2019, packs around 175 people into its sanctuary every Shabbat without charging mandatory dues, uses a three-section mechitza that includes a space for nonbinary congregants, and is intentionally apolitical, drawing congregants across the ideological spectrum. The Forward’s deep-dive is a genuinely surprising story about what Jewish community building can look like when someone throws out the rulebook. If you care about the future of Jewish belonging, this is the experiment to watch.
(The Forward, January 30, 2026)
EDUCATION
We Are the People of the Book. Let’s Not Become the People of the Screen. A visit to a Tunisian Jewish community offers a bracing reminder of what Jewish learning was actually built for.
Adam Eilath visited the 2,000-person Jewish community of Djerba, Tunisia, and watched students spend hours in rhythmic repetition, memorizing Torah texts in the ancient tradition of mishneh. He came away with a provocation for modern Jewish educators: digital tools that promise efficiency and access may be quietly hollowing out the discipline that made Jewish literacy durable across millennia. A short, lucid, and important piece for anyone involved in Jewish education at any level.
(Mosaic Magazine, February 5, 2026)
ART
Culture & Sacred Art “49 Ways to Be Jewish: A New Exhibit Paints the Sacred” The Forward, March 13, 2026
A new exhibit at the Derfner Museum of Judaica, “Envisioning the Sacred,” brings together paintings, prints, drawings and linoleum cuts by Jewish artists across generations, tracing a lineage from Chagall and Soutine through the New York abstract painters to contemporary voices, all grappling with how to render Torah, Moses, and Jewish spiritual life in visual form. A wonderful culture piece with real depth for listeners interested in Jewish art and identity.
(The Forward, March 13, 2026)