Dear reader,

We hope you are finding time to gather with friends and loved ones during these difficult days. We’re grateful to be a part of your community, and, as we did last year, we want to celebrate Hanukkah by introducing you to some of the writers, editors, and organizational staff who make Jewish Currents what it is. Each night, you’ll meet a different member of our team, who will reflect on work they found particularly meaningful from the last year.

The support of this staff is only made possible through the generosity of you, our readers. We don’t take advertisements or have an angel-investor, and we make all our work accessible to all. So it’s your engagement and support that makes the labor of our writers, editors, artists, and fact-checkers possible, and allows us to continue exploring the issues and questions most vital to you. We’re proud to shine a light on the people behind Jewish Currents, to share with you who and what you are supporting when you read, listen, donate, and subscribe to our magazine.

I’m Alex Kane, senior reporter at Jewish Currents. One aspect of working at Jewish Currents I particularly value is our commitment to telling stories with a nuance and rigor that you won’t find in other Jewish news outlets or the mainstream press. We do this not only in our written coverage, but also on our podcast, On the Nose, where we convene conversations with activists, analysts, scholars, politicians, and journalists. In February, for example, I hosted an episode about the Israeli protest movement opposing the Netanyahu government’s plan to diminish the power of the Supreme Court. I spoke with Iranian Israeli activist Orly Noy and Palestinian citizen of Israel and activist Sally Abed, who complicated the dominant framing of the movement as a bid to save “Israeli democracy”—pointing out the movement’s hostility to Palestinian citizens of Israel, its refusal to confront Israel’s repressive rule over Palestinians in the occupied territories, and the Supreme Court’s role in legitimizing Israel’s military occupation. Noy’s explanation of the Mizrahi Israeli relationship to both the protest movement and to the Israeli right and Abed’s discussion of her experiences as a Palestinian citizen of Israel who participated in the protests deepened my understanding not only of the movement but also of the tensions and hopes that animate Israeli society more broadly.

Today, the plan to gut the judiciary is on hiatus, likely permanently, as Israel wages its brutal assault on Gaza. But the issues that we highlighted on our podcast—like Netanyahu’s overall agenda and how the occupation produces profound contradictions for Israel’s democratic institutions—remain crucial to understanding Israel, and I remain grateful for the kind of coverage that refuses superficial engagement and instead gets to the heart of what’s at stake.

To continue producing insightful and challenging work like that mentioned above, we rely on our supporters and subscribers. Please consider sustaining our work by making a donation, becoming a member, or subscribing to Jewish Currents today. Our subscriptions also make great gifts.

As a small token of our appreciation for our community of readers and contributors, we are also offering newsletter subscribers 30% off of anything in our online store if you use the code GELT2023. Shop Jewish Currents gifts—including our new line of merch!—for your friends and family, or to treat yourself.

Thank you for your continued support. We wish you a restorative and meaningful holiday season.