JRV1290

Fellow Grassroots, Come Help Us Build Our “Grassroots American Jewish Street”

#1290 October 12, 2025

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: What I began back in 2001 as a weekly email to my fellow Jewish grassroots commenting on issues confronting us has now grown into a book and a website, affording you ability to help build a grassroots public square expressing all sides of issues plus a your-photos portrait of our U.S. Jewish life.  Here’s a brief look at the site’s Grassroots American Jewish Street and at how you can contribute to its depiction of us.

The Role of Our U.S. Jewish Grassroots

POP QUIZ, girls and boys: Who wrote this?

“Today’s American Jews live in a ‘miraculous age,’ Charles Krauthammer wrote, that of the rebirth of Jewish homeland sovereignty after eighteen hundred years. But much of the world denies the Jewish people’s claim to the Jewish homeland’s heart and soul – historic Jerusalem and defensible Judea-Samaria biblical hill country heartland, calling them ‘occupied Palestinian territories.’ Many call Israel ‘a settler-colonial state’ with no historical or legal claim to the land of Israel at all.”

Give up?  I wrote this, on the back cover of my new book, Here & Now: U.S. Jews and the Issues Confronting Us.  I appended that we grassroots American Jews “must not be silent,” that we need to refute malevolent myths distorting our three millennia Jewish history, canards spanning from “King David was as real as King Arthur” through Israel today is committing “genocide” in Gaza. 

But we need to do more.  We grassroots American Jews need to go beyond defensively refuting Jew-demonizing canards by actively manifesting to all Americans that we take pride in our Jewish peoplehood and in our people’s historic homeland. 

My book’s a compilation by subject of “the best” of my weekly emails, aimed at focusing our thought on our people and homeland. So when my book’s publisher included in our deal “a website for my book,” I leapt at the chance to expand it, which I’m now actively doing, to embrace our “Grassroots American Jewish Street.”  The site perforce will have blogs by me and others on those “issues confronting us,” but with your words and photos will also vibrantly depict us living our American Jewish lifestyle – commemorating our Jewish holidays and life milestones, taking trips with Jewish themes, indulging in your-supplied “Jewish” recipes, etc.  I.e., I want you personally to participate in paving our Street, literally make it yours.  Below I’ll say how.

A Quick Look at Our Grassroots American Jewish Street Website

But first, come take a look at what so far is there.  On your computer (the site’s not tuned yet for mobile devices) click

That will take you to the home page.  On the top menu click

“Grassroots American Jewish Street”

That will take you to our “American Jewish Street,” the middle of the three screen shots shown below:

Click on “Celebrate Our Jewish Street” (the leftmost selection). That’ll take you to “Grassroots Street Doings.” [Consider this and other presently imageless screens as preliminary blueprints of image-filled screens coming.]  Of the two choices shown there, click “Vacations with Jewish Twists.” 

That’ll take you to the screen on the left side of the screenshot collage above, my first-of-its-kind prototype of the photo-strewn Jewish connection travel tales I ask you to contribute.  I hope you’ll find mine of interest.  We had a great time.  All these contributions, yours and mine, will have (moderated) comment forms at their feet.  Fire away!

From there, click back on the menu’s “Grassroots American Jewish Street,” and then this time on “Israel For Us Grassroots,” and then “Steve & Michal Kramer’s Hikes and Tours All Over Israel.”  You’ll see previews of three of their posts.  Click on “With the IDSF in the Gaza Envelope.”  This, as the squib warns, will take you to some grim reading, but you need to go there, to “A Visit to the Post-Oct 7 Gaza Envelope.”  We may know tomorrow whether Israel’s war with Hamas is now over, but what Steve and Michal visited there has an emotional permanence.

Come Live a Little on Our Grassroots American Jewish Street

Ok, tour’s over (but, if you like, wander around our just-started site; and come back often, as we’ll be adding new stuff each week). 

Now, here’s how you can be a personal part:

Blog on Issues Confronting Us: When the spirit moves you to take the initiative and express your view on an issue confronting us, email me a Word doc for me if it fits (not based on the position you take) to post in your name.  Include a headshot if you can and a bit of bio on you. 

Your Photos and Text on Living Jewish Life: Email me photos (jpg, png) and accounts of you and your family or group living U.S. Jewish life – celebrating holidays or life events, taking trips with a Jewish connection, etc.  Include a head shot of yourself if you can, and a bit of bio.

Comment Away: My and your postings will typically have comment forms at their feet.  I moderate comments to stave off abuse.

Send Suggestions: What are we missing to present a fuller lifestyle picture of our grassroots?  Email me.

Now Three Ways to Comment On Me

Over the years, a few (not always the same) of you comment by replying to my email each week, sometimes arguing with the position I take.  I try to promptly respond.  Keep doing this if you like.

But starting now, this weekly email will have at its foot a link to its page on the website.  There’ll be a comment form at the bottom.  Comment there, initiating a comment thread by you, me and others.  Or, if you prefer keeping your comment private with me, begin with the word “Private,” in which case I’ll privately email you back.

I’ve appreciated over the years your thoughts on the issues on which I write, and I hope you’ll continue and yourself be part of building Our Grassroots American Jewish Street.