It’s long past time we stop pretending the right-wing crackdown on higher education had anything to do with “fighting antisemitism.”

"The Work of Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

The fact that JD Vance is openly talking like a Nick Fuentes supporter is a sign of where the energy in the Republican Party is moving.

Sure hope the ADL is feeling good about their decision to work with this administration on deporting college students right about now.

Because nothing says "free thinkers" like regurgitating the same tired old antisemitic conspiracy theory that they've been playing for years now.

This is a good reflection on why I think Quentin Tarantino, despite his obvious technical talents, is the most overrated filmmaker of his generation. willsloan.substack.com/p/on-tarantino

This sounded better in the original German.

"So, you're asking questions about Israel? About its apartheid policies?" "No, not those questions." "About why it gets so much military aid?" "No, not that." "About its opposition to Palestinian statehood?" "No, not that." "Well, what questions then?" "You know, about the global Jewish conspiracy."

Think the marriage of convenience between the Israeli right and the historically antisemitic global far-right has been bad for Diaspora Jews? Wait until you see the divorce.

You absolutely should ask questions about the policies of the state of Israel, but when you go straight from "the US should support Israel because it's God's plan" to "Israel killed Charlie Kirk," without any pit stop in between, it's a sign you don't have a normal relationship to Israel as a state.

A good rule of thumb is that any time someone says the behavior of a contemporary person is directly attributable to something in a much earlier religious text, you should be skeptical. And that very much goes for the politicians who say the actions of, say, ISIS, are directly about the Quran.

Any time someone says "The Talmud says X," without referencing specific citations or specific debates, you can pretty safely ignore what they are saying.

Bringing up the Talmud in reference to Jeffrey Epstein is antisemitic. Don't do this shit.

I've learned a lot of stuff in my life that I rarely have reason to use, but I've also learned a lot of stuff that I never expected to need to use and do use regularly, and the larger point is that there is value to being an educated person, without everything needing to be instrumentalized.

I feel like there's a word for a legal system that explicitly has different rules for different ethnic groups: www.cbc.ca/news/world/i...

This is good to see and worthy of support: www.jta.org/2025/12/18/p...

That feeling when you deeply hate trans people, but also, you need to jam the bill through by linking it with other issues, too, and in so doing, you inadvertently invent a new gender. (Yes, this is a real bill.)

Congratulations to the ADL for deciding to go all-in on working with this administration because of some college student protestors who used intemperate rhetoric.

It really isn't good for the Jews that we seem to be at the center of a lot of the right-wing infighting going on right now, but that does seem to be the case.

Just as the right is currently undergoing a civil war between the "MAGA can include Jews" and the "We hate Jews" factions, it would not surprise me if there is a civil war to come between the traditionalist Catholics and a revived Know-Nothing anti-Catholic faction.

"Every suffering is a suffering, and it shouldn’t be underestimated. But to use that as a justification for causing more suffering is untenable, wrong, immoral." www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/m...

Learning that Zohran Mamdani celebrated Hanukkah with Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody means there is still some joy in the world.

Tell me again about how Zohran Mamdani is the biggest threat to American Jews right now. www.yahoo.com/news/article...

Shabbat Shalom and Gut Shabbos to everyone but especially trans people. You are here, you are valid, you matter, and you will be part of our community long after these monsters in power have been lost to the dusts of history.

Reminder that just this past week, JD Vance claimed that stopping immigration was the best way to curb antisemitism in the US: www.clevelandjewishnews.com/jta/jd-vance...

From a focus group of Gen Z Republicans. (www.city-journal.org/article/manh...) Tell me again about how Zohran Mamdani is the big threat to Jewish thriving in the US today.

Here's a column about the speech that Jewish students at Harvard got on Hanukkah in 1907 from the president of the university.

I think the assumption from the Jewish parents quoted in this article that if they had just taken their kids to Israel more often, their kids would not have voted Mamdani is... suspect. In my experience, that is not necessarily what happens when young American Jews spend time in Israel.

It's always the ones you most expect: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Today and always, I stand with my trans friends, students, and loved ones. I see you, you are valid, and you matter.

There are so many valid reasons to criticize the ADL, and Tucker Carlson finds a non-valid one.

If only there were a literary parable for a creator who builds a monster and then loses control of it.

The new Polish president, endorsed by Trump, has ended the tradition of lighting a Menorah at Poland's presidential palace, a gesture of coming to terms with Jewish history. He said he ended the lighting because "I take my attachment to Christian values ​​seriously." forward.com/opinion/7919...

A lot of people seem incapable of processing any tragedy that happens to Diaspora Jews without making it about Israel-Palestine. And that goes for both the ones saying, "This is where 'Globalize the Intifada' slogans inevitably lead!" AND the ones saying, "But Chabad is a pro-Israel organization!"

People on all sides of the issue seem determined to make the horrific antisemitic shooting at Bondi Beach about Palestine, even though the shooter was quite open about saying he was inspired by ISIS, an organization devoted to a transnational caliphate and so hostile to Palestinian nationalism.

"To foster a campus climate of real inclusion, we need to convene and converse, not record and report... Our administrations and governments just have to give us the respect, job security and academic freedom to do so." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

The combination of receding memory of the Holocaust, loss of guardrails over information due to the internet, rising ethnonationalism, and the actions of the state of Israel, mean that this problem is almost certain to get worse over time.

Antisemitism and anti-Judaism are structurally necessary for the self-definition of Christian culture and modern nationalism. For two generations post-WWII, in at least the US and Western Europe, antisemitism was lower because of guardrails kept after the Holocaust. That is now breaking down.

This headline is worse than misleading; it is actively false. No one is proposing to end gender-affirming health care for cisgender youth.

I would go further and say that if you have ever used "Zionism" to mean "aspirational call for Jewish self-determination" and gotten frustrated when people see Zionism as racist dispossession, you should understand why a Palestinian might feel the same about "Intifada." And vice versa.

Believing Humbert Humbert is a reliable narrator with whom we are intended to relate is related to the total lack of any subtext of the Age of Trump. We are dealing with people who have never had to say anything other than what they actually mean. Why wouldn't they read "Lolita" that way?

What do these people think "Lolita" was actually about? What do they think Nabokov intended us to think about Humbert Humbert?

"In the current time of rising antisemitism and racism in general as well as growing populism in the US and a number of European countries, we urgently need an engaged, diverse, and democratic commemoration of the Holocaust that encourages people to learn from the past."

It's notable that being in favor of Standing Together (which I very much am) now makes you unacceptable to both a certain group of people on the left AND a group of establishment diaspora Jewish institutions.

Letter to the UK Holocaust Memorial Day Trust from UK Jewish Studies scholars, asking them to reconsider their recent firing of their Scottish representative because of her affiliation with Standing Together, which accuses the Israeli government of genocide. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

I actually think the lesson here is that we really do need ways to evaluate the bigotry and hatefulness of speech beyond purely subjective feelings of upset and offense, which can easily be misused.

A certain generation of American Jewish institutionalists seemed to believe that by defeating Mamdani, they could defeat anti-Israel politics. I think the opposite is more likely. The next major anti-Israel politician in the US will be a lot less careful to distinguish Israel from American Jews.

Canada has decided to leave all the names off of its new Victims of Communism memorial, after discovering that a large number of names on the original memorial list chosen as "victims of Communism" were actually Nazi collaborators. www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/12/17/c...

We have failed an entire generation. www.thecut.com/article/brow...