by Matthew Friedman | Oct 3, 2025 | Essays, Jewish Life, Politics
In May, I started writing an essay pushing back against the dominant Maximalist Zionist narrative that criticism of the State of Israel and support for Palestinian civil rights and national autonomy is antisemitism. I documented the history of the rhetorical equation...
by Matthew Friedman | Jul 4, 2025 | Behind the Lines, Essays
The sky over Camp Wooden Acres in St-Adolphe-d’Howard, Quebec erupted in color and light; the flashes and trails of the fireworks reflected in the lake below. It was 4 July, and we had had a similar pyrotechnic display just three nights earlier. But these fireworks...
by Matthew Friedman | Jun 18, 2025 | Commentary, Essays, Politics
I did not march last weekend. It is not that I don’t support the demonstrations, and I still feel guilty about not “doing my part,” but I am a permanent resident in the US. That makes me a barely-tolerated foreigner in the United States with the flimsy armor of a...
by Matthew Friedman | Jun 9, 2025 | Essays, Jewish Life
I live in fear. It isn’t an intense terror or that primal fear of imminent destruction. Rather, I live in a constant state of suspended apprehension that something is about to happen, something bad. It has happened before and, as Hannah Arendt noted, once evil is...
by Matthew Friedman | Apr 19, 2025 | Behind the Lines, Essays
By refusing to even countenance the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States from a Salvadorian concentration camp, the Trump regime is testing norms and boundaries; but more than that, it is signaling how it expects to shape the future, and the White...
by Matthew Friedman | Sep 24, 2023 | Essays, Jewish Life
True atonement is difficult because we are not always aware of our sins against others, and from whom to ask forgiveness. The Tefilah Zaka meditation goes, “I know that there is no one so righteous that they have not wronged another,” and that is my point of departure...