Editor’s note

In 1953, Jacob Sonntag opened the first issue of The Jewish Quarterly with the following declaration of intent: “At no time was there a greater need for clear thinking and searching analysis as to where we stand in the world today – as Jews, as citizens, and as ordinary human beings.”

Sonntag, this publication’s founding editor, was writing at a tumultuous moment. Less than a decade earlier, World War II had ended, as had the “tragedy of European Jewry” (not yet known, ubiquitously, as the Holocaust), and Israel was just five years old. The world and its boundaries, Sonntag observed, were changing at a seemingly unimaginable pace, and this was presenting questions – about politics, history, community and culture – that could not be answered through simple slogans or unthinking assertions of belief. “Patterns of the past,” he wrote, “no longer fit into the framework of the present.”

This relaunch issue of The Jewish Quarterly marks a new stage for the publication – it will be available globally and will be globally focused. But the challenge outlined by Sonntag remains.The world

editor’s note

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