JFN President and CEO Andrés Spokoiny's presidential address at the JFN 2022 International Conference, delivered in Palm Beach, Fla., on March 27, 2022.

The challenge of our time – said Bertrand Russell – is how to be decisive in the face of uncertainty. Now, I’m by temperament at ease with ambivalence and uncertainty. I generally welcome it, even enjoy it, but having lived through the last couple of years, I feel like the guy having a glass of whiskey on the deck of the Titanic saying, “I know I asked for ice, but this is ridiculous!” But jokes aside, the last couple of years took a toll on my psychological wellbeing.

The synagogue of “El Tránsito” in Toledo, Spain is among the oldest and most beautiful in the world, with a sanctuary displaying magnificent Moorish decorations and gorgeous Hebrew inscriptions. Among the verses and invocations, three words are the largest and more ornamented: “HaMelekh Don Pedro” (The King Don Pedro).

Toledo’s Jews were not alone in their obsequiousness to the reigning monarch. Until modern times, being “close to the king” was considered a good strategy for Jews. He granted them privileges and protected them. In most cases, Jews had nowhere else to turn. Gentiles were enmeshed in a broader order of relationships with fixed rights and duties: nobles with their feudal lieges, serfs with the land, tradesmen with guilds, and all Christians with the Church. The king was, therefore, the only one who could protect the Jews from an often-hostile populace.

Updated on March 30

We at JFN have been horrified to watch the Russian invasion of Ukraine and are deeply concerned about the amount of human suffering it is unleashing, as well as its implications for democracy, Europe, and the entire world.

Below you will find information and resources for providing assistance to the people of Ukraine, with a particular focus on its Jewish population, which is one of the world’s largest Jewish communities. Many, particularly the elderly, were already struggling and isolated even before their country was plunged into war. 

We encourage you to support Passover for Ukraine, a JFN partnership with UJA-Federation of New York, which we announced at the JFN 2022 International Conference. UJA-Federation is matching all JFN member donations up to $1.25 million. Learn more here and donate here.

One of the quotes that is repeated the most around the holiday of Tu Bishvat (the “New Year of the Trees) is, “Because Man is like a tree in the forest” (Deuteronomy 20:19). Rabbis in every generation have tried to explain that meaning-rich comparison, and many see that quote at the root (so to speak) of Judaism’s approach to stewardship of the Earth.

But can a tree be compared not to an individual person, but an entire people?

Mythical stories in all cultures, which developed mostly before literacy was common, rely on portentous and unusual images to be memorable: Elijah ascending to Heaven in a chariot of fire; the Red Sea splitting for the Israelites; Jesus walking on water. These images violate the apparent order of things, so once you visualize them, your brain will make sure you remember them for good.

The novelist Milan Kundera noted that the difference between a path and a highway is that a path is “a strip of ground over which one walks,” whereas a highway “is merely a line that connects one point with another.” A highway, he wrote, has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects and “is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.”

Kundera wondered whether, in all but disappearing from the modern landscape, paths have also disappeared from the human soul. He lamented that people do not view their lives as a path, but as a highway, “a line that led from one point to another, from one role to the next … Time became a mere obstacle to life, an obstacle that had to be overcome by ever greater speed.”

Who would we be if we had made different choices? If we’d told that secret, left that relationship, written that book?

That’s the question at the heart of “L’Anomalie” (“The Anomaly”), the book by Herve Le Tellier that won France’s prestigious “Prix Goncourt.” A mix of philosophical novel, science fiction, human comedy, and social critique, “L’Anomalie” explores what happens when a flight en route from Paris to New York in March 2021 is caught in a monster storm over the US coast. Flight AF006, a 747, manages to navigate out of the cumulus nimbus and land safely at JFK Airport, but through a bizarre quantic phenomenon, a copy of the plane is created. That second version of Flight AF006, with all its passengers and crew, emerges out of the storm in June, a few months after the “original” plane had landed.

The word “horizon” is tricky. We generally refer to the horizon as an indication of expansiveness, even limitlessness. But etymologically, the word means exactly the opposite. It comes from the Greek word “horizein,” which means “limit.” The horizon is, in fact, the limit of our vision — in Hebrew, as well, where the word for horizon, “ofek,” has the same root as “restrain, constraint, limit.”

According to Midrash, all the souls of the future generations were present at Mount Sinai the moment the Torah was given. As a child, I believed this to be literally true, which posed some challenges to my young mind. First, was I among those that built the golden calf? And if I was there, why didn’t I remember any of it? I did try to picture myself there, imagining myself as an extra in “The 10 Commandments” looking at Charlton Heston from afar.

One article changed my whole view of Zionism.

Since I’d grown up in a strongly Zionist environment, from my home to my day school to my camp, believing that Israel was a model country that could do no wrong, the article should have produced a crisis, and maybe even threatened my attachment to the Zionist idea. Yet, it did the exact opposite.