I’m not surprised, but I am heartbroken. I love New York City. Where my grandparents settled after they escaped the Shoah and started a new chapter for our family. Where I went every weekend growing up, the bastion of culture, of opportunity. The site of 9/11, which shaped my adolescence. Where I went to college, fell in love, and pursued graduate school. Where we lived as newlyweds and where my daughter was born. I can still feel the rattle of the subway lines and the woosh of the trains...

Accountability is uncomfortable in a way that almost nothing else is. It asks you to stay in the room with truths you would rather not know. It asks you to let go of the story you’ve been holding — the one where the adults were in control, the systems were sound, the guardrails were real. It asks you to see what you didn’t want to see. And the body reacts first. Not the mind. A quiet instinct to look away, scroll, distract, explain, soften. Because accountability means: If this really...

The body of Omer Neutra has been returned to Israel. I want to pause there — before the metaphors, before the collective language we reach for automatically. His body was returned, his life and potential interrupted. Omer was twenty-two. He grew up in New York in a family that held Israel close. There are people for whom Israel is a concept, and there are people for whom Israel is a gravitational field. Omer felt the pull. He chose to enlist here. That kind of choice means something. It...