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TM
Kaleidoscope
magazine
Cover art: Ruth Donner “Mystery Beyond the Mountains (Collage)
Letter From The Editor
A few words from Leon Fine, editor of Kaleidoscope magazine, on Issue 5.
Affirming Zionism: What does that mean? - Gideon Shimoni
Amid intensifying attacks on the meaning of Zionism, this text argues that Zionism is a diverse, evolving ideology rather than a single political position. To affirm it is to recognize Jews as a people entitled to self-determination, while still allowing profound criticism of Israel’s policies, leadership, and even its current state structure.
“The Microbiologist and His Times:” The Scientific Activism of Salvador Luria - Rena Selya
A Jewish refugee from Fascist Europe becomes a founder of modern molecular biology through pioneering work on viruses and genetics, while insisting that scientific freedom carries moral responsibility. His career weaves groundbreaking research with outspoken activism for democracy, equality, and peace, showing how science and conscience can shape one another.
The Weight We Carry: How We Rise Against Gravity Before Returning to the Earth - Brennan Spiegel
A meditation on gravity as the hidden force shaping our bodies, minds, and health. Drawing on medicine, biology, and lived experience, it shows how standing, movement, posture, and the gut help us resist being pulled down—physically and emotionally—revealing health as a lifelong act of rising, balance, and purposeful resistance before we finally return to the earth.
TopCut - Zvi Jagendorf
A fragmented, darkly comic meditation on aging, memory, and bodily shame, tracing a life shaped by cuts both literal and historical. Moving between childhood trauma, exile, and return, it weaves private vulnerability with inherited wounds, asking how violence, silence, and loss lodge themselves in the body—and how, if ever, they can be laid to rest.
Tiny strand of RNA causes toilet paper panic - Owen Epstein
A reflection on how a microscopic virus triggered global fear far beyond its biological effects. Tracing the early spread of Covid-19 alongside mass toilet-paper hoarding, it explores how invisible threats, media amplification, and deep-seated instincts shape collective panic, revealing how human behavior under crisis can spread faster than disease itself.
Measles vaccination and the danger of overturning an historical achievement - John Gordon Frierson
A sweeping history of measles reveals how a once-devastating disease was brought to the brink of extinction through vaccination, saving millions of lives. It warns that misinformation and declining vaccine coverage are now reversing this hard-won success, allowing a highly contagious virus to resurge and putting populations—especially children—back at grave risk.
Cover art: Ruth Donner “Mystery Beyond the Mountains (Collage)
Letter From The Editor
A few words from Leon Fine, editor of Kaleidoscope magazine, on Issue 5.
Affirming Zionism: What does that mean? - Gideon Shimoni
Amid intensifying attacks on the meaning of Zionism, this text argues that Zionism is a diverse, evolving ideology rather than a single political position. To affirm it is to recognize Jews as a people entitled to self-determination, while still allowing profound criticism of Israel’s policies, leadership, and even its current state structure.
“The Microbiologist and His Times:” The Scientific Activism of Salvador Luria - Rena Selya
A Jewish refugee from Fascist Europe becomes a founder of modern molecular biology through pioneering work on viruses and genetics, while insisting that scientific freedom carries moral responsibility. His career weaves groundbreaking research with outspoken activism for democracy, equality, and peace, showing how science and conscience can shape one another.
The Weight We Carry: How We Rise Against Gravity Before Returning to the Earth - Brennan Spiegel
A meditation on gravity as the hidden force shaping our bodies, minds, and health. Drawing on medicine, biology, and lived experience, it shows how standing, movement, posture, and the gut help us resist being pulled down—physically and emotionally—revealing health as a lifelong act of rising, balance, and purposeful resistance before we finally return to the earth.
TopCut - Zvi Jagendorf
A fragmented, darkly comic meditation on aging, memory, and bodily shame, tracing a life shaped by cuts both literal and historical. Moving between childhood trauma, exile, and return, it weaves private vulnerability with inherited wounds, asking how violence, silence, and loss lodge themselves in the body—and how, if ever, they can be laid to rest.
Tiny strand of RNA causes toilet paper panic - Owen Epstein
A reflection on how a microscopic virus triggered global fear far beyond its biological effects. Tracing the early spread of Covid-19 alongside mass toilet-paper hoarding, it explores how invisible threats, media amplification, and deep-seated instincts shape collective panic, revealing how human behavior under crisis can spread faster than disease itself.
Measles vaccination and the danger of overturning an historical achievement - John Gordon Frierson
A sweeping history of measles reveals how a once-devastating disease was brought to the brink of extinction through vaccination, saving millions of lives. It warns that misinformation and declining vaccine coverage are now reversing this hard-won success, allowing a highly contagious virus to resurge and putting populations—especially children—back at grave risk.
Cover art: Ruth Donner “Mystery Beyond the Mountains (Collage)
Letter From The Editor
A few words from Leon Fine, editor of Kaleidoscope magazine, on Issue 5.
Affirming Zionism: What does that mean? - Gideon Shimoni
Amid intensifying attacks on the meaning of Zionism, this text argues that Zionism is a diverse, evolving ideology rather than a single political position. To affirm it is to recognize Jews as a people entitled to self-determination, while still allowing profound criticism of Israel’s policies, leadership, and even its current state structure.
“The Microbiologist and His Times:” The Scientific Activism of Salvador Luria - Rena Selya
A Jewish refugee from Fascist Europe becomes a founder of modern molecular biology through pioneering work on viruses and genetics, while insisting that scientific freedom carries moral responsibility. His career weaves groundbreaking research with outspoken activism for democracy, equality, and peace, showing how science and conscience can shape one another.
The Weight We Carry: How We Rise Against Gravity Before Returning to the Earth - Brennan Spiegel
A meditation on gravity as the hidden force shaping our bodies, minds, and health. Drawing on medicine, biology, and lived experience, it shows how standing, movement, posture, and the gut help us resist being pulled down—physically and emotionally—revealing health as a lifelong act of rising, balance, and purposeful resistance before we finally return to the earth.
TopCut - Zvi Jagendorf
A fragmented, darkly comic meditation on aging, memory, and bodily shame, tracing a life shaped by cuts both literal and historical. Moving between childhood trauma, exile, and return, it weaves private vulnerability with inherited wounds, asking how violence, silence, and loss lodge themselves in the body—and how, if ever, they can be laid to rest.
Tiny strand of RNA causes toilet paper panic - Owen Epstein
A reflection on how a microscopic virus triggered global fear far beyond its biological effects. Tracing the early spread of Covid-19 alongside mass toilet-paper hoarding, it explores how invisible threats, media amplification, and deep-seated instincts shape collective panic, revealing how human behavior under crisis can spread faster than disease itself.
Measles vaccination and the danger of overturning an historical achievement - John Gordon Frierson
A sweeping history of measles reveals how a once-devastating disease was brought to the brink of extinction through vaccination, saving millions of lives. It warns that misinformation and declining vaccine coverage are now reversing this hard-won success, allowing a highly contagious virus to resurge and putting populations—especially children—back at grave risk.
Cover art: Ruth Donner “Mystery Beyond the Mountains (Collage)
Letter From The Editor
A few words from Leon Fine, editor of Kaleidoscope magazine, on Issue 5.
Affirming Zionism: What does that mean? - Gideon Shimoni
Amid intensifying attacks on the meaning of Zionism, this text argues that Zionism is a diverse, evolving ideology rather than a single political position. To affirm it is to recognize Jews as a people entitled to self-determination, while still allowing profound criticism of Israel’s policies, leadership, and even its current state structure.
“The Microbiologist and His Times:” The Scientific Activism of Salvador Luria - Rena Selya
A Jewish refugee from Fascist Europe becomes a founder of modern molecular biology through pioneering work on viruses and genetics, while insisting that scientific freedom carries moral responsibility. His career weaves groundbreaking research with outspoken activism for democracy, equality, and peace, showing how science and conscience can shape one another.
The Weight We Carry: How We Rise Against Gravity Before Returning to the Earth - Brennan Spiegel
A meditation on gravity as the hidden force shaping our bodies, minds, and health. Drawing on medicine, biology, and lived experience, it shows how standing, movement, posture, and the gut help us resist being pulled down—physically and emotionally—revealing health as a lifelong act of rising, balance, and purposeful resistance before we finally return to the earth.
TopCut - Zvi Jagendorf
A fragmented, darkly comic meditation on aging, memory, and bodily shame, tracing a life shaped by cuts both literal and historical. Moving between childhood trauma, exile, and return, it weaves private vulnerability with inherited wounds, asking how violence, silence, and loss lodge themselves in the body—and how, if ever, they can be laid to rest.
Tiny strand of RNA causes toilet paper panic - Owen Epstein
A reflection on how a microscopic virus triggered global fear far beyond its biological effects. Tracing the early spread of Covid-19 alongside mass toilet-paper hoarding, it explores how invisible threats, media amplification, and deep-seated instincts shape collective panic, revealing how human behavior under crisis can spread faster than disease itself.
Measles vaccination and the danger of overturning an historical achievement - John Gordon Frierson
A sweeping history of measles reveals how a once-devastating disease was brought to the brink of extinction through vaccination, saving millions of lives. It warns that misinformation and declining vaccine coverage are now reversing this hard-won success, allowing a highly contagious virus to resurge and putting populations—especially children—back at grave risk.
Issue 5
Mystery Beyond the Mountains (Collage)
Cover artist - Ruth Donner
Ruth Donner lives in Israel. She received her BA in European languages and literature
from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and her MA in TESOL from Tel Aviv University. As her major career she worked as an English teacher and translator. She has travelled extensively and has a wide range of interests. In recent years she took up photography, and very soon adopted the technique of collages. She participated in several exhibitions in Israeli art galleries, both group exhibitions and solo ones. She also took part in a group exhibition in Moscow, and in two International Internet exhibitions.
Ruth regards the collage as an abstraction of concrete photographs, a transition from the figurative to the abstract and conceptual, from the static to the dynamic. Merging single pictures endows them with a new meaning, and creates a whole that is larger than the sum of its parts.
Her large collection of collages is based on thousands of pictures she has taken over the years in different countries, each of them has its own atmosphere and conveys its own message. She derives her main inspiration from the beauty of nature, and the infinite variety of natural shapes and colors.
Previously Featured Articles
What Is The Jewish Right To Land of Israel?
Early Zionist thought framed Jewish claims to the Land of Israel as a moral argument of existential need, balanced against Palestinian claims. Since 1967, discourse has shifted toward a faith-based belief in divine, exclusive ownership. This transformation has fueled hyper-nationalist politics and intensified the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Remembering Stanley Fischer
A pioneering economist and central banker, he shaped global financial policy, guided nations through crises, and mentored a generation of leaders. From the IMF and World Bank to Israel’s central bank and the U.S. Federal Reserve, his steady leadership left lasting impact. Remembered for vision, resilience, and warmth, his legacy endures in the strength of economies and the lives of those he influenced.
Have we reached the end of constitutional democracy? - Dennis Davis
Rising populism, media manipulation, and billionaire influence threaten constitutional democracy, pushing nations toward authoritarian rule.
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