Across Israel, we're catching our breath and realizing how much we've been holding. These last few weeks have been a whirlwind of closing chapters. H*stages we were worried we would never see again like Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal, Alon Ohel, Rom Braslavski, Matan Angrest, the Cunio brothers, the Berman brothers, and more- they were returned home, were brought back to their families, their communities, and began the healing process. H*stages that had been k*lled were a

Kristallnacht is a date that has been burned into my memory. Seared into my DNA; a building block of my sense of where I come from and what my people have been through. When I was small, my Oma used to tell my sister and me stories about that horrible day and night- the 9th and 10th of November. Even into my adulthood, I've had nightmares about broken glass and the smell of smoke, br*tal men, the barking of dogs, and the h*rror of it all. Her stories laced our childhood with

UPDATE: it’s official. Hadar Goldin is home!!!! ********* Hadar, are you really coming home? We’ve seen your beautiful smile plastered on bumper stickers and banners, signs and signposts for almost ten years. You have been this light- a life full of potential; your sweet fiance, your family, your community- you were stolen so long ago during that horrible summer of Tzuk Eitan. G*za back then was like a black hole. From the Jewish imagination, whatever was sucked into its dark

Rom showed us something holy yesterday. He came to hostage square for the first time- saying that he had dreamed of this moment in G*za. When he spontaneously got up to speak, he asked us if we had watched his interview- if we knew the things we all now know about what he went through — things that wound the soul just to hear them. The kind of harm meant to shatter a person from the inside out. No one should ever bear what he bore. No one. But in Hostage Square, what we saw w

Yesterday I was called a list of names so vile I can’t even repeat them. The comments on my post were so gross it’s hard to believe these are real people. Sometimes it’s bots, sure. But there are actually real people who kiss their moms with those mouths. I need to say this plainly: The antisemitism online right now is not accidental and it is not only organic. It is being cultivated. Amplified. Incentivized. Platforms thrive on outrage, and the Jewish story is being used as

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

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 th

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 so

I want to say something clearly: Zohran Mamdani is politically and ideologically aligned with Linda Sarsour. She endorsed his candidacy. She is someone who has built an entire public career on aggr*ssive, expl*cit, and unapologetic anti-Jewish rhetoric. She has d*monized Israel as a “settler colonial project,” defended openly v*olent anti-Israel organizations, and repeatedly dismissed Jewish identity and trauma as political inconvenience. This is a person who stood on stages

Every last hostage from Nir Oz, alive or de*d, has now come home. It is a sentence too heavy to hold, and yet it is also a promise kept. Nir Oz was shattered on October 7th. A community uprooted. Families torn open. Children, parents, grandparents, neighbors stolen from their doorsteps and from their lives. The silence that followed was unbearable. How well we know their names. Their faces. Their stories. And today, even in grief that has no bottom, something sacred has happe