menu_open Columnists
Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

Everyone Has a Plan for Gaza

Everyone Has a Plan for Gaza Governments have plans. Donors have plans. Security officials have conditions. Technocrats have committees. International...

yesterday 30

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Netanyahu’s Concrete State

Netanyahu’s Concrete State: How Israel Learns to Live With Impunity Benjamin Netanyahu’s political survival has required more than coalition...

previous day 30

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

We Love America. How Convenient.

We Love America. How Convenient. We love America, of course. It is rich, cinematic, generous when it wants to be, brutal when it has to be, and always...

04.07.2026 40

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Israel Needs a State, Not Another Savior

Netanyahu’s triangle of failure is now impossible to ignore. October 7 destroyed his security myth. Iran exposed the limits of his strategic...

03.07.2026 40

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Seyag LaTorah, Lo Magen Sheker

סְיָג לַתּוֹרָה, לֹא מָגֵן שֶׁקֶר Seyag LaTorah, Lo Magen Sheker A Fence for the Torah, Not a False Shield Torah is not a...

02.07.2026 50

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Judea Is Not a Footnote

Judea Is Not a Footnote Naftali Bennett and Israel’s Unfinished Return The debate around Naftali Bennett is usually misread when it is reduced to...

01.07.2026 40

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Judaism Is Not the West’s Moral Certificate

Judaism Is Not the West’s Moral Certificate Something has shifted inside part of the Israeli right and part of the American Jewish establishment....

30.06.2026 50

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

When Providence Becomes a Party Instrument

When Providence Becomes a Party Instrument There is a dangerous moment in Jewish political life when theology ceases to be an opening toward judgment,...

28.06.2026 50

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Korach and the Mob

Korach is one of the most dangerous political figures in the Torah because he says something that sounds true. In Numbers 16, Korach and his men rise...

27.06.2026 70

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

When Complicity Becomes a Weapon

The case of Pilar Rahola is not only about Pilar Rahola. It is about what happens when a democratic society begins to translate political...

25.06.2026 40

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

The Haredi Threshold

The Haredi draft crisis is no longer a sectoral dispute. It is not merely about manpower, coalition bargaining, or the familiar slogan of sharing the...

24.06.2026 60

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Bnei Brak Is Not a Failure of Modernity

Bnei Brak should stop being discussed as if it were merely a demographic inconvenience, a political irritation, or an embarrassing relic at the edge...

21.06.2026 60

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

The Idolatry of Force Is Not Strategy

The Idolatry of Force Is Not Strategy There are moments when a state is not defeated first by its enemies, but by the collapse of its own language....

19.06.2026 40

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Israel Was Not Betrayed. It Was Repriced

Israel Was Not Betrayed. It Was Repriced. Israel was not betrayed by Donald Trump. It was repriced, and that distinction is brutal but necessary....

18.06.2026 50

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Missing the Mark in Plain Sight

How Media Caution Protects Strategic Failure from Recognition Not every form of caution is intellectually responsible. Sometimes caution is simply the...

17.06.2026 60

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Israel’s War, America’s Ending

Israel’s War, America’s Ending Benjamin Netanyahu is claiming victory over a war whose ending he no longer owns. That is the quiet defeat inside...

16.06.2026 60

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

The De-escalation Trap

The De-escalation Trap When peace does not remove danger, but transfers it. A ceasefire can be a moral achievement. It can also be a technology for...

15.06.2026 60

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

AI and the Shape of the Jew

AI and the Shape of the Jew The most dangerous antisemitism is not always the one that announces itself. Sometimes it arrives as plausibility. A...

12.06.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Israel Cannot Outsource the Permission to Survive

Israel Cannot Outsource the Permission to Survive There are moments when an alliance does not break. It simply reveals what it has become. The latest...

09.06.2026 70

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

When Activism Cannot Hear Palestinians

The Activism That Cannot Hear Palestinians The contemporary Western activist often does not hear Palestinians first. He hears the echo of his own...

08.06.2026 70

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

October as a Weapon

There are moments when an election is no longer simply an election. It becomes an operation performed on public memory. Benjamin Netanyahu now appears...

07.06.2026 60

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Israel’s Double Reclassification

The most dangerous political events do not always announce themselves as ruptures. Sometimes the rupture is hidden inside continuity. The flag remains...

06.06.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

The State Must Return

A poll is not a covenant, and a majority is not yet responsibility. Numbers may indicate a political opening, but they do not by themselves constitute...

05.06.2026 70

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Do Not Call Submission Repair

There are moments when polite language becomes indecent, not because it is vulgar, but because it refuses to name what is happening. It covers...

04.06.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Rented Sovereignty

Israel, Netanyahu, and the Patron’s Invoice There are moments when diplomacy stops pretending to be diplomacy and reveals itself as accounting. The...

02.06.2026 70

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

When ‘We Jews’ Becomes Too Simple

When “We Jews” Becomes Too Simple There is a sentence one hears more and more often: we Jews will manage. Let them talk. Let the world condemn....

01.06.2026 70

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Mental Divorce from Israel?

As public opinion shifts, governments turn protest into policy, and Jews abroad become unwilling proxies for Israel, the question is no longer whether...

28.05.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

When Security Becomes Immunity

Timothy Snyder recently described the United States under Donald Trump as engaged in “superpower suicide.” The phrase is harsh, but useful. It...

27.05.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

When Power Learns to Profit from War

There is a moment when corruption stops being a scandal and becomes a form of government. It does not always arrive with bags of cash, crude threats,...

26.05.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

When Nefesh (נפש) Leaves the Throne

When the Nefesh Leaves the Throne Jewish language becomes weak when it is translated too quickly into the language of the modern self. Bitul...

25.05.2026 70

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

When AI Ethics Becomes a New Egypt

The Vatican is right to enter the debate on artificial intelligence. But it should not be the only religious voice standing at the threshold. Pope Leo...

23.05.2026 60

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

When Ground Is No Longer Ground

When Ground Ceases to Be Ground There are books that can be rejected only after they have been read. Eyal Weizman has written such a book....

21.05.2026 60

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Smotrich and the Naked Grammar of the State

Bezalel Smotrich should not be defended, but he should not be misunderstood. That distinction matters. To defend him would be to become an apologist...

20.05.2026 70

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Eurovision and the Failure of Managed Absence

Eurovision and the Failure of Managed Absence The most interesting fact about Eurovision 2026 is not that Israel did not win. Bulgaria won, and did so...

17.05.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Adam Was Not Created to Be an Interface

Adam Was Not Created to Be an Interface The first mistake is to think that Adam means “the first human being.” That is already too modern, too...

14.05.2026 80

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

The New Jew Was a Battlefield, Not an Identity

There was never one “New Jew.” There was a struggle over which Jew would be allowed to carry the future. This is the necessary continuation of any...

07.05.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

The State Was Not the Beginning

The State Was Not the Beginning There is a lazy way to speak about Zionism, and there is a serious one. The lazy way begins in 1948 — with borders,...

06.05.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

When Suffering Is Not Enough

My view of Hannah Arendt remains critical. I do not treat her as a secular prophet whose every sentence must be repeated with the solemn face of an...

04.05.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

What We Owe Our Children, Not Our Enemies

A community does not betray itself by asking difficult questions. It betrays itself when it leaves those questions to its enemies. A movement built to...

02.05.2026 100

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Rigor Without Sovereignty

There is a form of seriousness easily mistaken for strength. It speaks from above. It guards the entrance. It decides who may think, who may speak,...

30.04.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Selective Sacrifice Is Breaking Israel

There are moments when a community must stop consoling itself with its own vocabulary. Israel has become very skilled at speaking the language of...

28.04.2026 100

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

When Mourning Tries to Seize the Blessing

Israel is not arguing about a medical procedure. It is arguing about who may touch the forbidden place where death, name, lineage, and future meet....

24.04.2026 100

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

The Gate Was Never Really Opened

I have been reading Susanne Heim’s Die Abschottung der Welt. Als Juden vor verschlossenen Grenzen standen 1933–1945, and what stays with me is not...

22.04.2026 100

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Do Not Use Rabbi Akiva to Preach Submission

On Israeli Independence Day, the real question is not only what binds a people together, but what kind of moral language teaches the weaker side to...

21.04.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

When the Uniform Comes Off, Power Remains

When the Uniform Comes Off, Power Remains Three young women showed up for their final discharge day from the IDF in civilian clothes: a tank top, a...

19.04.2026 100

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

When Collaboration Stops Looking Like Collaboration

When Collaboration Stops Looking Like Collaboration The pretext for this text was a Times of Israel article on Henri Matisse and the question of...

18.04.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

To Not Was Not a Scandal. It Was an Offer.

To Not Was Not a Scandal. It Was an Offer. When a swastika appears in the Polish parliament, the easiest response is to speak about the brutalization...

16.04.2026 100

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

When Power Starts Dressing for the Altar

When Power Starts Dressing for the Altar This is not a joke. It is not internet sludge. It is not one more vulgar Trumpian performance to be filed...

14.04.2026 100

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

Great Israel Begins Before the Border Moves

Great Israel Begins Before the Border Moves The most dangerous territorial projects do not begin with tanks. They begin when a larger map stops...

13.04.2026 90

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig

When Jews Start Looking for Safety in the Wrong Places

“A shelter that destroys the house is not safety” When Jews Start Looking for Safety in the Wrong Places One of the ugliest political facts of our...

12.04.2026 100

The Times of Israel (Blogs)

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig