This article is part of Times Opinion’s 2025 Giving Guide.
Ours is the time of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. It is also a time when accusations of antisemitism have become a political cudgel. And, not coincidentally, it is the time of a head-spinning, unrelenting attack on our very ability to make sense of the world. For all of these reasons, I encourage readers to consider making a donation to Jewish Currents, a small, nonprofit magazine that is uniquely positioned to respond to the challenges of our time. (I serve in an unpaid position on the magazine’s board that has no direct involvement in editorial policy or day-to-day operations.)
A good magazine provides an informative and pleasant read. A great magazine fills you with excitement when you find it in your mailbox. It makes you want to hide from all distractions and, when you are done, to both hoard it and push it on everyone you know. Such a magazine is an alchemical concoction — something that is evidently different from and greater than the sum of its parts.
That’s how I feel about Jewish Currents. Published in print three times a year and online several times a week, it features a mix of reporting and commentary, all executed with the highest journalistic standards, and featuring celebrated writers and writers we are sure to celebrate in the future. It has offered bracing coverage of the war in Gaza and of settler violence in the West Bank, but it also looked deep into the future of Israeli politics, the growth of anti-Zionist Jewish activism and the workings of the pro-Israel American right.
It shows much more courage than most mainstream outlets, having published sensitive internal documents from the Anti-Defamation League, a guide to how to give yourself an abortion and what may have been the first major call by a contemporary Jewish publication for Israel to become a secular, binational state. Recent pieces include an investigative story on the Trump administration’s campaign against George Soros and progressive philanthropy and an essay by the Iranian American author Sahar Delijani that took my breath away with its description of exile — and its analysis of Iran’s place in world politics.
Seventy-nine years ago, Jewish Currents was founded as a communist publication. In 2018, its aging stewards handed it over to a group of young people with a distinct set of political beliefs and a very different relationship to Judaism. (After the new leadership started a weekly religion column, one of the old guard announced, on the magazine’s podcast, that the idea of it made him sick.) Maybe this long and jagged history explains why Jewish Currents feels like the perfect magazine to help think about how we got to where we are and what might be done about it.
The genocide in Gaza has reshaped American Jewish politics, and American politics more broadly. Unconditional support for Israel is no longer a given among the public, or even among Jews. Meanwhile, the Trump administration and the MAGA movement have appointed themselves the defenders of Jews. In the name of fighting antisemitism they have taken down university presidents, forced universities into agreements that violate academic freedom and have defunded essential research — all while courting actual antisemites more and more openly.
It’s enough to break your brain, and that is very much the point. Autocrats aim to scramble reality, plunging the citizenry into a permanent state of anxious confusion.
The brain-breaking effects of autocracy are why we need small magazines as places of sense-making. I have spent most of my career working in legacy media. But I got my start in community media, and I still believe that small publications are where politics and new ideas are forged. This is particularly true in times of upheaval, when conventional wisdom and conventional approaches to politics feel irrelevant or inadequate.
When I was young, community media could support themselves by selling ads. These days, the only viable model for small media seems to be a nonprofit one — and, with the Trump administration ratcheting up pressure on philanthropic foundations, individual donations are a more reliable source of funding. Please join me in helping to support Jewish Currents and the vital work they do.
This article is part of Times Opinion’s Giving Guide 2025. If you are interested in any organization mentioned in the guide, please go directly to its website. Neither the authors nor The Times will be able to address queries about the groups or facilitate donations.
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