Midstream was a magazine established by the New York-based Theodor Herzl Foundation, which was associated with the American Section of the World Zionist Organization. Described as an "intellectual Zionist journal".^[1][2] It to a significant degree saw itself as playing a role somewhat similar to that of Commentary, an intellectual publication of the American Jewish Committee, but with an explicitly Jewish focus. Midstream began publication in 1955.^[3] Started as a Quarterly Jewish Review, it became a monthly in 1965.^[4][5] Its final print edition was in 2013.

Midstream was a journal of opinion, focusing on political, social and religious topics related to Jewish communities.^[4] While it was not the official organ per se of the Foundation, it was established, at a time when a range of similar publications were being printed, such as Partisan Review, The Reconstructionist, and even The New Republic, as a means for expression of a wide range of opinions within political Zionism, not necessarily reflecting the views of the magazine's editors. ^[6][7]

Midstream to a significant degree followed the basic political arc of Commentary from liberal to center-of-the-road to somewhat conservative to neoconservative, reflecting the views of a succession of editors, although it was not the same arc of the majority of American Jewry.

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