Celebrating Our Fortieth Anniversary
What did it mean to be an Orthodox Jew in America in the eighties? In the nineties? In the early 2000s? The questions change, the headlines shift—but leaf through the pages of Jewish Action and you’ll find the story of a community in constant motion.
From the Cold War to the chaos of Covid, our pages have mirrored four decades of change—technological, religious and cultural. Each era brought its own vocabulary, its own anxieties, its own hopes.
Through it all, Jewish Action tries to make sense of what it means to live a thoughtful, Torah-committed life in an ever-changing world. We tackle the headlines as well as the quieter revolutions shaping Jewish life: women’s learning, the cost of day school, the lure and peril of technology.
And some subjects never quite leave us. Antisemitism. Family and work. Kiruv and chinuch. Each decade has forced us to revisit these themes with fresh eyes.
In 1985, Joel Schreiber and Rabbi Matis Greenblatt reimagined Jewish Action, turning it from a simple newsletter into a magazine willing to think deeply, argue honestly and write beautifully. Forty years later, our mission—to educate, inspire and strengthen our community’s religious life—remains as vital as ever.
To mark this milestone, we turn back to the 1980s and trace the arc of four decades of change. In this wide-ranging symposium, we asked writers and thinkers to reflect on the religious, cultural and communal shifts they’ve witnessed. And as we look back, one truth stands clear: the conversation that began forty years ago is still alive, still unfolding, still essential.
In This Section
Celebrating Our Fortieth Anniversary
Jewish Action Through the Years