…the ability of an individual halakhist to bring about a change depends, to a certain extent, on his ability to foresee the opposition of his peers to his innovation. From these conclusions, it is possible[…]
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Category: Jews
“The phenomenon of a minority people arising out of the ashes of Auschwitz to reframe not only their world but to also profoundly impact the broader culture may best summarize this century of Jewish influence”
…out of the trauma and tragedy of the earlier decades of the 20th century, Jews redefined their image and reconstructed their roles in the post-World War II period. This represented a point in time when[…]
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“Nearly 80 years after Kristallnacht, we are not exactly sure what a Nazi is, or should be”
When Adolf Hitler’s party emerged from Bavaria with a philosophy called “Nationalsozialismus,” two of that word’s syllables were quickly repurposed by Hitler’s cosmopolitan opponents. They started calling the new party Nazis — implying, to the[…]
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“Diaspora Jews must learn, not shun, intersectional discourse in all its forms and be part of the discussion while not being afraid to challenge instances of exclusionary intersectionality”
On too many college campuses, political activists embrace exclusionary intersectionality. Jewish students have reported feeling unwelcome in certain social justice coalitions. In such instances, anti-Israel students have become gatekeepers for campus coalitions, citing intersectionality in[…]
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“White nationalists in the United States perceive the country as having plunged into unending crisis…”
Within social and economic justice movements committed to equality, we have not yet collectively come to terms with the centrality of antisemitism to White nationalist ideology, and, until we do, we will fail to understand[…]
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“If you feel the need to interrogate every Jew and demand they denounce Israel (or any other Jews or Jewish actions) before allowing them into your space, you are a racist”
Jews are not collectively accountable for the actions of all other Jews, any more than Muslims, African-Americans, or immigrants are. If you feel the need to interrogate every Jew and demand they denounce Israel (or[…]
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“…it was my organizing against antisemitism as a Black antiracist that first pulled me to the Jewish community, not the other way around”
If I live and work, as I do, in the kind of daily, intimate Black-Jewish coalitions that were a mainstay of the civil rights movement but are now supposed to be fraught with mutual suspicion,[…]
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“Being progressive does not insulate you from falling prey to bigotry anymore than being conservative does…”
Medieval Christian Europe persecuted its Jews because it considered them responsible for the alleged acts of completely different Jews in the Middle East. The Chicago Dyke March just did the exact same thing to American[…]
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“The public and private discussions I’ve had just in the past month suggest a hunger to understand antisemitism…”
Over years of speaking about White nationalism in the 1990s and early 2000s in the Northwest and then the Midwest and South, I found that audiences—whether white or of color, at synagogues or churches, universities[…]
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“As a narrative device in Hebrew, Yiddish, and other vernacular literatures, the tavern has served as a metonym for the rural Jewish encounter with the local Christian population…”
As a narrative device in Hebrew, Yiddish, and other vernacular literatures, the tavern has served as a metonym for the rural Jewish encounter with the local Christian population—it is economically generated and culturally conflicted, but[…]
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