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.”
