Tablet Magazine

26 February 2025

28 Shevat 5785

Greek refugees at the Port of Moudania (today Mudanya, Turkey), 1922

The Moral Case for Mass Relocation

What does history show us about President Trump’s proposal to permanently move the population of Gaza?

byBrian Horowitz

Hummus and History

The chickpea connects modern-day Jews to our ancestors from thousands of years ago

byPaola Gavin

Ukraine’s Losing Position

Trump isn’t going anywhere. Neither is Putin.

byVladislav DavidzonandMark Galeotti

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Sanhedrin 70

L’chaim!

February 25, 2025

Mel Bochner (1940-2025)

Mel Bochner’s Torah
Paintings that tell us to eff off while showing us the way in
by Jeremy Sigler
December 15, 2017

Hummus and History

The chickpea connects modern-day Jews to our ancestors from thousands of years ago

byPaola Gavin

Ukraine’s Losing Position

Trump isn’t going anywhere. Neither is Putin.

byVladislav DavidzonandMark Galeotti

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Collection

Refuseniks

Tablet pays tribute to the ordinary and the extraordinary heroes of one of the great movements for human freedom of the 20th century, which helped topple the Soviet Empire—and which distilled the purest values of mutual responsibility and love in the global Jewish community in a way that immeasurably strengthened Jews in America, as well as the State of Israel. The date we have chosen to feature these pieces commemorates Feb. 11, 1986, the day Natan Sharansky arrived in Israel for the first time.

See the full collection →︎

David Shrayer-Petrov, Leningrad, circa 1959

Nine Lives

The lives and legacies of the refusenik writer David Shrayer-Petrov

byMaxim D. Shrayer

In a Birch Forest, With the KGB

Extraordinary photographs of a refusenik picnic in 1974, when Soviet Jews were far from free

byBurton Caine

The Cult of ‘Antizionism’

American progressive ideologues have formed a new ideology based on the negation of an all-powerful phantasm they call ‘Zionism.’ To fight them, we need to understand the origins of their beliefs in the Soviet academic propaganda apparatus.

byIzabella Tabarovsky

In a Birch Forest, With the KGB

Extraordinary photographs of a refusenik picnic in 1974, when Soviet Jews were far from free

byBurton Caine

The Cult of ‘Antizionism’

byIzabella Tabarovsky

A Russian Typewriter Longs for Her Master

A portrait of my father, the refusenik writer and medical scientist David Shrayer-Petrov, as a New England poet

byMaxim D. Shrayer

Detail of a painting of the arrest of four would-be hijackers in Priozersk, by Mark Dymshits, oil on canvas, Israel, 1982

Hijacking History

Fifty years ago today in Leningrad, a small group of Soviet Jews was tried for attempting a daring escape to Israel. Eerily, their story is relevant again—this time, for American Jews.

byIzabella Tabarovsky

‘Religion is the enemy of workers of all nationalities,’ 1929-1931

The Cool Kids

Self-mutilation as a Jewish cultural strategy and the sad history of the Yevsektsiya

byDara Horn

A Fourth of July Story

Independence Day is doubly special for the legendary refusenik Natan Sharansky and his family. He sits down for a wide-ranging interview about his wife Avital, love among Jewish people, and the promise of freedom.

byDavid Samuels