5th Issue

A few words from Leon Fine, editor of Kaleidoscope magazine, on Issue 5.

Amid intensifying attacks on the meaning of Zionism, Gideon Shimoni 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.