Dear all,
For my moment in time this week, I offer a short video highlighting my Sabbatical at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem! Looking forward to sharing perspectives when I return!
With love and Shalom,
Rabbi Zachary R. Shapiro
Dear all,
For my moment in time this week, I offer a short video highlighting my Sabbatical at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem! Looking forward to sharing perspectives when I return!
With love and Shalom,
Rabbi Zachary R. Shapiro












A Jewish Angeleno looks back several decades and wonders whether the golden age of LA Jewry is behind us.

When England took a 1-0 lead early in the second half, I felt a sense of cosmic justice. Sixty years is a long time. Argentina won it the last time. Maybe it was England’s turn.

The Beatles’ manager’s life makes “a wonderfully inspiring and terribly sad story.”

Restaurants, gift shops, hotels and car rental companies have all been hit hard by the ongoing war. The blow to the economy is evident almost everywhere you go.

Do you want to convince Jews, and the world, that Zionism is a cause worth supporting? Explain what “Zionism” is, and perhaps it will turn out that the world is actually on our side.

In this moment of rising antisemitism, I’ve noticed that the way I remember, and retell, my own childhood has changed too.


Miniature, polite gestures of memorialization serve neither as insurance against future catastrophes nor as tributes to the victims. So should we stop to acknowledge them?

Do not give up on institutions — but do not disengage from the responsibility to hold them accountable.

For close to 30 years, we forked up whatever we could afford and were happy to do it. It was now time for them to experience the exhilaration of staring at a pile of bills, not knowing where the money would come from.

It is difficult to see another member of Congress or administration official capable of moving a possible Israel-Saudi deal to fruition.

During his roughly 30-minute speech, he warned that Israel had become a “prisoner of its own tools” and that the American-Israel relationship, although historically strong, was “at a crossroads.”

At a moment when California faces soaring costs, housing shortages, energy challenges, water insecurity and mounting technological competition from China, Ro Khanna chose to travel halfway around the world in pursuit of yet another public confrontation with America’s closest and best ally in the Middle East.

This $120 million investment is modeled after the American NIH, and it will accelerate the timeline from lab discovery to clinical treatment.

Just like any emotion or any label, hate can be denied. What is much harder to deny is one set of rules for the world and another for the Jews. That’s not an emotion. It’s an action.

“Citizen Vigilante” serves as a warning to governments that if they don’t secure their borders, enforce laws, and protect their most vulnerable, ordinary people will resort to self-help.



The only hope for a better future is to turn the Palestinians away from Hamas and back on the path of building their economy and a democratic society that conceivably could regain the trust of Israelis.

No one else is willing to pay the price except Israel which understands its survival depends on it.