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.