Arielle Angel, the editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents, was recently the subject of a profile in the New York Times. Jewish Currents, founded in 1936 and relaunched in 2018, is a progressive, secular Jewish quarterly magazine. In this profile, the Times’ Emma Goldberg writes that, “Under [Arielle Angel’s] watch, the publication has exploded in heft and ambition.”

The appeal of Jewish Currents was evident shortly after the relaunch, when its first party drew some 400 guests to a bar in Gowanus, where people broke out in an impromptu hora.

While holding its own during a challenging time for little magazines — rest in peace, Bookforum and Astra — Jewish Currents has published investigations of sexual dynamics on Birthright trips to Israel and the embrace of Donald Trump in the ultra-Orthodox community. Senator Bernie Sanders published his antisemitism policy platform on the site. The gender theorist Judith Butler has written for Jewish Currents and joined its advisory board. Peter Beinart, a former editor of the New Republic, came onboard in 2020 as an editor at large.

“It was a phenomenon I’d been imagining or speculating about, and here it was in the flesh,” Mr. Beinart said. “It’s the kind of thing my generation of American Jews did not produce.”

Read the full article