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 | 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 | 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...
by Matthew Friedman | Jun 6, 2023 | Commentary, Essays, Jewish Life
I laughed so hard that I passed beer through my nose. The occasion was the first episode of Saturday Night Live’s 14th season which aired just days after the High Holy Days in 1988. Hosted by Tom Hanks, whose movie Big had been a surprise summer blockbuster, with the...
by Matthew Friedman | Jan 27, 2023 | Essays, Jewish Life
At the end Viktor Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis, Kaiser Uberall accepts his fate: he will be sacrificed to restore the balance of life and death that his own arrogance and brutality so tragically upset. It is one of the most powerful moments in 20th century...
by Matthew Friedman | Jan 19, 2023 | Commentary, Essays, Jewish Life
There is a note of tragic foreboding in the twelfth chapter of the first Book of Kings. This is where “Israel rebelled against the house of David” and the Kingdom of Israel, united under Saul, David, and Solomon, is split asunder as Jeroboam, a head man of the tribe...