Martini Judaism

I have done my share of traveling in Europe, and when I am there, I visit cathedrals.

Most are majestic, and they are filled with Christian art that would take a decent docent a decade to unpack for me.

I have never been to Brussels, though I would like to visit. And when I am there, I expect to make a special trip to the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula. That is the subject of Flora Cassen's new book, "Stained Glass: A Reflective History of Antisemitism."

The cathedral is, by all accounts, a masterpiece. Built between the 13th and 15th centuries, it rises above the old town on its own little hill, and when the lights hit the stonework at night, it looks like lace carved out of sky.

But I imagine myself stepping inside. I would look intensely and intentionally at the stained-glass windows — the ones donated by Belgium’s first two kings in the 19th century. And inside that beautiful space, an erudite guide might tell a story about a Jew who, in 1370, was accused of torturing Communion wafers. 

It is an expression of one of the libels that tormented Jews during the Middle Ages — one of the most bizarre — the host desecration libel. It resulted in six Jews burned at the stake and the rest expelled from the city.

And there it is. In the windows. In the tapestries. In the chapel. In the capital of the European Union. Today. 

Flora's book is itself a modern medieval tapestry — of Jewish and European history and family memoir, the story of a 15th-century Jewish woman named Beatrice de Luna — also known as Dona Gracia — and the story of Flora’s own grandmother, Pola, who fled the Nazi occupation of Belgium through the Congo. 

So, why does this book matter, and why do you need to read it?

It is because of what you already know. Antisemitism is rising — on university campuses, in social media feeds, even in food co-ops in Brooklyn.

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When I reflect on my rabbinical career, I realize I have spent nearly a third of it south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Yes, that includes about 10 years in South Florida — and lest you see South Florida as a mere extension of Long Island, when I moved to Miami in 1981, it still had traces of an old Southern Jewish community. I enjoyed my time in the South. I found the people gracious, the communities strong, and I did good work there.

However, I never fully grasped Southern Jewish sociology. I famously and infamously missed social cues. I never fully understood what it meant to be a Jew in the South.

If only I had sat at the feet of Nick Lemann, with whom I had a conversation for our podcast. 

His new book, "Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries," is the story of his German Jewish family, who journeyed from a small village in the Rhine Valley to the sugar plantations of Louisiana and into the elegant, complicated world of New Orleans high society. They prospered. They assimilated. They sent their children to Harvard. They built beautiful homes under live oaks and hosted cocktail parties with silver trays and crustless duck sandwiches.

And yet, even at the height of their success, a quiet awareness lingered: Acceptance was real, but never complete.

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I was talking recently with a young man about his social life. He described an evening that did not sound like the stuff of romantic legend.

The dinner seemed to be going well. The wine flowed, as did the conversation -- with just enough spark to suggest possibility. He leaned into the moment, sensing chemistry, feeling that quiet optimism that accompanies a promising first date.

And then she leaned forward, lowered her voice, and asked a question that changed everything.

“I really like you,” she said. “I feel attracted to you.

"But I need to know something. Are you a Zionist?”

He had expected something more intimate, something more personal. Instead, he found himself fumbling through an answer about loving Israel, supporting Israel, caring about Israel.

Let’s just say there would be no second date.

The young woman, by the way, was also Jewish.

There is an elephant in the Jewish living room, and that elephant is: Israel.

That is the subject of my podcast conversation with Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and one of the most compelling interpreters of contemporary Jewish life. Yehuda writes and teaches with intellectual rigor and moral urgency. He spends his days helping Jews think more honestly about power, responsibility, and identity. He embodies the name Yisrael itself — the one who wrestles — because he refuses easy answers and insists on staying in the struggle.
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I had weird reading habits when I was a kid.

For one thing, no one ever told me that there were certain books that boys should read, and certain books that girls should read, and that there was a mechitza (a barrier in a traditional synagogue that separates the sexes) between the two of them.

What did I know? That was how I came to devour the entire Harriet the Spy series.

Because, well, I liked spies.

And then, there was Judy Blume, born Judith Sussman, in 1938.

Judy Blume is one of the most important Jewish writers of the twentieth century.

Judy Blume? The lady who wrote about training bras and embarrassing gym classes?

Yes, that Judy Blume. OK, she’s not Philip Roth or Saul Bellow, or Cynthia Ozick. And, yes, the "serious" literary establishment never really invited her into their club.

They might have been wrong.

Mark Oppenheimer has just published the definitive biography of Blume: Judy Blume: A Life. As I read the biography, and as I reflected on my podcast interview with Mark, I kept thinking: someone needs to make the Jewish case for Judy Blume.
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What does the Torah actually say about immigrants — and what does it demand of us?

Rabbi Jeff Salkin sits down with one of the Jewish world's leading theologians, Rabbi Shai Held, to explore the Bible's most repeated commandment: love the ger — the stranger, the sojourner, the immigrant. Held argues that "immigrant" is not just the most accurate translation of ger, it's the most morally urgent one. When the Torah says to love the immigrant, it's making a claim on us every single day.

Together, Salkin and Held trace the Torah's radical counter-vision to Egypt — a society built not on cruelty and power, but on empathy and care for the vulnerable. They explore what it means to imitate God by loving those whom God loves, why the stories of Abraham, Sarah, and Lot are really lessons in empathy, and how the Holocaust's legacy shapes the Jewish moral imagination.

And they end with the question Rabbi Held says belongs on the doorpost of every house of worship in the world: It's not whether you believe in God. It's whom your God loves.

Rabbi Shai Held is President, Dean, and Chair of Jewish Thought at the Hadar Institute, which he co-founded. His most recent book is Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life.

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