Dear Reader,

Over the last few months, I have been thinking obsessively about the Jewish people’s relationship to the idea of home. For centuries our home in the diaspora has been community, scholarship—the space where we debate ideas with one another. In the aftermath of October 7th, too many of these spaces have been buckling under the strain of grief, trauma, suspicion, and fear. Too many institutions have lost the ability to hold more than one idea at a time.

A few months before the current war, I joined the Jewish Currents board. I did so because the magazine spoke to me in a way no other Jewish space did. In its pages, on its site, and through its podcast I found the voices of people who thought expansively and critically. The Winter/Spring 2022 issue on Soviet Jewry analyzed my literal home in the context of progressive Jewish thinking—I’d been waiting for it for decades. The Spring 2023 issue on Germany and the politics of memory presaged some of the more bizarre and disturbing standoffs of the current moment.

Since October 7th, I have found myself thinking again and again how grateful I am to have this space of both sanity and safety—the safety to exchange opinions that is, for many of us, lacking in our families and our everyday communities. But to sustain this project, we need you. By joining as a member of Jewish Currents, you’ll help us deepen this space through events and programs, and ensure we can grow it for others.

How grateful I am to have my Jewish home. I hope you are too.

Sincerely,

Masha Gessen