Seth Chalmer

Thinking strategically about how nonprofits should respond to potentially polarizing world events. Stanford Social Innovation Review, March 27, 2024. For nonprofit communications professionals (and nonprofit executives), the very worst time to talk about public advocacy around divisive issues is when you most urgently need to talk about them. This is especially true when there are…

I have created a Substack called Hamlet’s Chimera. It is a place to explore the many paradoxes in which I live and obsess. Two posts to begin with: Brain, Mind, & Self. Art & Polemic.

A few (relatively) recent original songs: A song (in Spanish) for Rachel, to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. (2023) A song that dares to ask: Are the dwarves in Tolkien Jewish? (2022)

eJewish Philanthropy, December 29, 2020. You know what the biggest problem is with Jewish engagement efforts? The problem is that we only focus on Jews.  I’m not kidding. In this country, if we want to get more Jews to shul, we need to get more Christians to church. To revitalize American Judaism, we need to…

Originally published in Quillette. November 12, 2020. Excerpts: When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, many Jews in the Russian Empire hoped for a French victory. Napoleon had eliminated barriers to Jewish integration and advancement in France; the Russian regime and its policies, by contrast, were thoroughly infused with anti-Jewish discrimination and hostility. But one prominent…

eJewish Philanthropy. July 23, 2019. It’s not uncommon, in Jewish communal circles, to hear it claimed that the central question for our profession today is, “Why be Jewish?” In an age of free choice and self-constructed identities, this argument goes, the Jewish community can no longer count on individuals to affiliate themselves and participate, so…

eJewish Philanthropy. June 20, 2019. The best way to get elected is to campaign on the policies I prefer. That’s the essence of what political writer Matthew Yglesias has called “the pundit’s fallacy.” It’s a useful concept for any kind of strategic thinking, not just politics. We all sometimes accidentally tip the scales of our empirical…

eJewish Philanthropy. (December 7, 2017. Based on an earlier Times of Israel blog post.) I fear American Jewish culture may not survive Pandora and Spotify. How shall I explain? I was once told that the first song to sell a million copies was ‘The Maple Leaf Rag,” by Scott Joplin, in 1897. Actually, this is…

LA Times. December 23 (online) / December 25 (print), 2016 In 2003, at age 21, I wrote an op-ed for my hometown paper arguing that the Montpelier, Vt., City Hall should remove its Christmas tree. I argued that Christmas decorations symbolically told Jews like me, and other non-Christians, that city government stood more for the…

The Times of Israel. Dec 14, 2016 Since Election Day, America has been fighting about tribalism. How much was Trump’s victory due to white tribalism? Should Democrats abandon “identity politics” hoping to transcend tribalism, or should they double down on multiculturalism, tribal though it may be? Eventually, the American mainstream will settle on answers to these…