PODCAST
Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle in Conversation
Harvey Pekar discusses Studs Terkel, and his own secular Jewish identity, with cultural historian Paul Buhle.

ESSAY
Female Prophets in the Bible
By RACHEL ELIOR
Rabbinic tradition and changing perspectives.

ESSAY
Song of Songs: A Secular Masterpiece
By YAAKOV MALKIN
The Bible’s secular love poetry.

FILM
Roots Lost and Found
By OLGA GERSHENSON
Russian-Jewish cultural identity on the silver screen.

HISTORY
Moses Mendelssohn: Father of the Haskalah 
By NORMAN MASSEY
A freethinking Jewish revolutionary.

NON-FICTION
Sarna's Haiku for Young Jews
By JESSE TISCH
A review of Jonathan Sarna’s A Time to Every Purpose.

ESSAY
The New Order of the Ages
By BARRY KOSMIN
Exploring the modern origins of secularism.

SCIENCE
Does Science Matter?
By JESSE TISCH
Secular values and the battle over science education.

HISTORY
Spinoza: The Marrano of Reason
By YIRMIYAHU YOVEL
A scholar decodes the heresy of Spinoza.

ESSAY
The Fall Holidays
By JUDITH SEID
A secular Jewish rabbi briefly explains the holiday season.

HISTORY
Baruch Spinoza: The Last Medieval Heretic or the First Secular Jew?
By DAVID BIALE
The heresy of Baruch Spinoza.

ESSAY
Jews and Native Americans
By RACHEL RUBINSTEIN
Reflections on Insider/Outsider Jewish Identity."

FOOD
Gefilte Fish or White Piano?
By ANNA SHTERNSHIS
Perceptions of the shtetl in Jewish life.

HISTORY
The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture
By DAVID FISHMAN
Chaim Zhitlovsky—One man’s contribution to Yiddish culture.

SPORTS
Jews and Sports
By REBECCA ALPERT
A surprising way to explore secular Judaism.

INTERVIEW
Channeling Spinoza
By JESSE TISCH
Q&A with Rebecca Goldstein, author of Betraying Spinoza.

ESSAY
The Jewish Century
By YURI SLEZKINE
Nineteenth-century Jews championed secularism and enlightenment.

DIALOGUE
Modern Love
By ILAN STAVANS with VERÓNICA ALBIN
Stavans discusses modern, secular concepts of Jewish love.

INTERVIEW
Lessons From the Prophets
By JESSE TISCH
An interview with Tony Kushner.

ESSAY
Judicial Power and National Politics
By PATRICIA J. WOODS
Courts and gender in the religious-secular conflict in Israel.

ESSAY
Resurrecting and Embracing Hebrew
By ILAN STAVANS
An exclusive preview of Ilan Stavan’s forthcoming book Resurrecting Hebrew.

ESSAY
The Joke's on Irving Howe
By NEAL KARLEN
A look at Yiddish books that make us laugh.

INTERVIEW
Guide to the Land of Oz
By BENJAMIN POLLAK
An interview with Amos Oz’s translator, Nicholas de Lange.

ESSAY
English as a Jewish Language
By LAURA LEVITT
The poetic entanglements of language and culture.

ESSAY
Abishag: from Biblical Obscurity to Literary Fame
By MIKA AHUVIA
The secular use of biblical stories.

ESSAY
Secular Literary Representations in Judeo-Persian
By DALIA YASHARPOUR
A survey of Iranian Jewry’s rich literary history.

ESSAY
Judeo-Arabic in Mizrahi Jewish Life
By RAYMOND SCHEINDLIN
How Arabic became a language of Jewish scholarship.

ESSAY
The Original Atheists With Attitude
By ROI BEN-YEHUDA
Part III: Sigmund Freud—religion as neurosis.

ESSAY
Being a Secular Jew in Israel
By DAN MAHLER
A brief history of the politicization of secular Judaism in Israel.

ESSAY
Multi-secularism
By PAUL KURTZ
Why secular values matter today.

ESSAY
Exodus and Agitation: Moses the Organizer
By ELIOT RATZMAN
Liberation doesn’t happen by accident.

ESSAY
God Has Seventy Faces
By RACHEL ELIOR
Elior explores God—the handiwork of man.

FOOD
You Eat What With Your Matzo?!?
By CLARA SILVERSTEIN
Food writer Clara Silverstein shares Passover's lesser-known culinary options.

ROUNDUP
Passover Reflections

Secular Jews reflect on holiday innovations and Judaism’s commitment to freedom.

ESSAY
Passover—An Evolving Holiday
By RABBI ADAM CHALOM
Adam Chalom considers the tradition of Passover innovation.

ESSAY
A Secular Passover
By MICHAEL FELSEN
Creating new traditions for meaningful holidays.

EXCERPT
Who Knows One?
By RABBI PETER H. SCHWEITZER
Irreverent lyrics to a "traditional" song.

ESSAY
The True Story of Purim
By JUDITH SEID
Judith Seid on the origins of the holiday.

ESSAY
The Original Atheists With Attitude
By ROI BEN-YEHUDA
Part II: Karl Marx—religion and economics.

 NON-FICTION
Beyond Reason
By JESSE TISCH
A review of The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby.

 ESSAY
Godless Jews: The Original Atheists with Attitude
By ROI BEN-YEHUDA
Ernestine Rose: Man made God in his own image—part I of a series.

ESSAY
Separating Myth and History
By YORAM MELTZER
An Israeli perspective on Hanukah.

POEM
Queen Esther
By VANESSA HIDARY
My Jewish Grandmother spoke Arabic.

ESSAY
Secularization in Mizrahi Jewish Life
By MICHEL ABITBOL
Mizrahi Jews “believed that just because something was done in the past did not make it sacred.”

INTERVIEW
Conversations with A.B. Yehoshua
By BERNARD HORN
Leading Israeli novelist Yehoshua discusses Jewish culture and identity, and the importance of Jewish texts.

ESSAY
Dario Moreno and Sephardic Cosmopolitanism
By PAMELA DORN SEZGIN
The life and legacy of Turkish singing legend Dario Moreno, the Mediterranean’s “Frank Sinatra.”

ESSAY
A Room With a View
By LUCETTE VALENSI
God let me down on a bright summer night…

ESSAY
Jews in the Ottoman Empire
By EYAL GINIO
Eyal Ginio explores secularization in the Ottoman Empire and its effect of the region’s Jews.

ESSAY
A Jewish Voice Left Silent: Articulating "The Levantine Option"
By DAVID SHASHA
Shasha reflects on the Sephardic legacy of coexistence.

ESSAY
Martin Buber’s Secular Religiosity
By RON MARGOLIN and SARAH PESSIN
In honor of the birthday of one humanitarian, we bring you the philosophy of another who influenced him.

ESSAY
Epicurus' Jewish Legacy
By YAAKOV MALKIN
Yaakov Malkin explores the ancient Jewish tradition of heresy.

ESSAY
Separating Myth and History
By YORAM MELTZER
An Israeli perspective on Hanukah.

ESSAY
Hanukah, sans Holy Oil
By JUDITH SEID
The historic roots of Hanukah.

ESSAY
The Jewish Shakespeare
By BETH KAPLAN
The tale of my great-grandfather, playwright Jacob Gordin.

ESSAY
Song of My Secular Self
By LAUREN SANDLER
Humor, intelligence and love of a good sale. Author Lauren Sandler explores her Jewish Identity.

ESSAY
Digging for Roots at Secular Summer Camp
By KATIE HALPER
A secular Jew finds her place in a non-traditional Jewish world.

ESSAY
Personal Reflections on My Jewish Identity
By ALAN DERSHOWITZ

ESSAY
What's Left of a Jew Who Has Abandoned Religion? (A lot.)
By EUGENE GOODHEART
An excerpt from Confessions of a Secular Jew.

ESSAY
Secular Jews and Pacifism
By BENNETT MURASKIN
As a secular Jewish youth, my heroes were hardly pacifists…

 ESSAY
The Colombian Inquisition
By ILAN STAVANS
A skeptic’s lesson on the virtues of secularism.

DIALOGUE
Modern Love
By ILAN STAVANS with VERÓNICA ALBIN
Stavans discusses modern, secular concepts of Jewish love.

VIDEO
Amos Oz on Modern Jewish Culture
For the Israel Prize-winning author, anarchism and humor are Jewish sensibilities. In this exclusive video he speaks on the depth, history, and importance of Jewish culture.

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Come back next month for more from Amos Oz.

ESSAY
Modern Encounters
By DAVID BIALE
A leading scholar reflects on the idea of modern Jewish cultures—plural.

ESSAY
New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora
By CARYN AVIV and DAVID SHNEER
Exploring global Judaisms and Jewish homelands.

ESSAY
Secular Jews and Jewish Ritual
By PETER H. SCHWEITZER
Opening doors to secular Jews through new secular rituals and celebrations.

ESSAY
Feminism as Tikkun Ha-Olam
By LEA SHAKDIEL
Secularism, humanism, and feminism embrace the social contract to repair the world.

ESSAY
The Roots of Secular Humanistic Judaism
By RABBI SHERWIN T. WINE
An eloquent essay on the historical formation of secular Humanistic Judaism.

ESSAY
The National Poetic Rebirth of the Jewish People
By HAIM ZHITLOVSKY
A classic essay by an architect of Jewish-American secularism.

ESSAY
Yiddishkeit in America
By IRENA KLEPFISZ
A lesson in language and identity.

ESSAY
Albert Einstein and World Peace
By LAWRENCE WITTNER
A look at the politics and humanity of a scientific man.

ESSAY
Some Totally Radical Women
By TONY MICHELS
The revolutionary use of Yiddish in the early 20^th century.

ESSAY
Still Outwitting History
By AARON LANSKY
A heimish look at the persistence of Yiddish.

ESSAY
The Touch of Leah's Hands
By NAOMI SEIDMAN
Kadya Molodowsky’s amazing modern poetry.

REVIEW
Singer Gets a Life
By MICHAEL WEX
The author of Born to Kvetch on the latest I.B. Singer biography.

ESSAY
And the Award Goes to... Queer Yiddishkeit
KATHLEEN PERATIS
Something queer's going on in the contemporary Yiddish scene.

POETRY
Klezmetrics
By RICHARD CHESS
Transposing Jewish music into the key of poetry.

ESSAY
Shira Gorshman: A Life in Three Acts
By FAITH JONES
Meet an author who wrote during some of the flashpoints of Jewish history.

NON-FICTION
God-Optional Judaism
By JUDITH SEID
Answers and alternatives for cultural Jews.

NON-FICTION
Poetry, Chutzpah, and American Freedom
By ALICIA OSTRIKER
Belonging to the canon and the country.

ESSAY
Beyond Belief
By JESSE TISCH
Pulitzer Prize-winner Natalie Angier on second-wave atheism, life after death, and Jewish stereotypes.

ESSAY
Freethinkers in the Government?
By SUSAN JACOBY
Secularism belongs at the center, not in the margins, of the American public square.

ESSAY
Back to the Future
By DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF
Re-embracing core traditions to create a modern Judaism.

ESSAY
Lilith, Then Miriam
By VANESSA L. OCHS
The "poster-girls" for Jewish feminists have come a long way since the 1970s.

ESSAY
What Does It Have to Do With Me?
By MITCHELL SILVER
The so-called "wicked child’s" question is part of the inspiration for a philosophy of secular Jewish identity and education.

ESSAY
Many Modern Questions for Many Modern Children
By PETER H. SCHWEITZER
Some questions prompt us to tell stories; others lead to deep discussion.

INTERVIEW
Three Decades of Jewish Feminism
By REBECCA PHILLIPS
Susan Weidman Schneider, founder of the magazine Lilith, discusses how she sees women continuing to change the world with words and deeds rather than flags.

ESSAY
Reflections on a Belated Apostasy
By NAOMI SEIDMAN
Even as a kid, Naomi Seidman knew that there was a Jewish world beyond her Brooklyn shtetl.

ESSAY
Jewish, Secular, and Popular
By TED MERWIN
Jazz-Age Jews not only consumed pop culture, they helped create it.

ESSAY
Holy Yiddishkeit, Batman!
By JEFFREY SHANDLER
Yiddishist Jeffrey Shandler has a quick but thorough lesson for novelist Michael Chabon.

REVIEW
The Next Generation
By JESSE TISCH
Jewish life and the end of the Diaspora.

ESSAY
What I Learned from My New Book
By PAUL BUHLE
A fresh look at Jews and pop culture by a noted scholar.