If both of these statements are true - that defeating fascism requires winning over a large number of disaffected white men, and winning over disaffected white men requires overlooking youthful dalliances with Nazism - them we really are in a bad place.

A fair point also. Broadly, when I teach the history of Zionism to students, I think binationalist cultural Zionism is a road not taken that I wish all sides of the debate today knew a lot more about - those who identify with some form of Zionism today, and those who do not.

You can have "Albert Einstein was a Zionist," or you can have, "Zionism necessitates maintaining a state with a Jewish voting majority in perpetuity." But if you adopt that latter definition of Zionism, Einstein was not a Zionist by that definition.

There’s a motte and bailey argument used often in the American Jewish community - to define “Zionism” in the most broad terms as “Jewish political self-determination,” so that if you oppose that definition, of course you are antisemitic.

If we recognize that it is unreasonable to demand that Jews disavow any relationship to any Zionists in their community to be considered good people, we should also recognize it is unreasonable to do that with Muslims and those with “bad politics” in their community. And the reverse is also true.

What gets me about this "six degrees of separation" that the ADL is trying to do to link Zohran Mamdani to Islamic extremism is that it is simply a characteristic of politics in small minority groups. And the ADL should know this, because they rightly call it out when it used against Jews.

Hard to see how academia recovers from this.

The ADL is essentially saying that the interests of Jewish New Yorkers are fundamentally at odds with those of Muslim New Yorkers. You cannot say that antisemitism requires the whole community to unify against a candidate but refuse to say the same about Islamophobia. It makes solidarity impossible.

Zohran Mamdani has moderated considerably on his rhetoric on Israel-Palestine - notably, condemning the "Globalize the Intifada" slogan and releasing a statement celebrating hostages coming home. His tankie fans are upset with him! And it still isn't enough for the ADL.

This is the best response I've seen to the rabbi who gave a sermon endorsing Andrew Cuomo for NYC mayor this past weekend.

I do not think this is in fact what he wants to do. Moreover, I think rhetoric like this will ultimately be harmful for American Jews in the long run. www.yahoo.com/news/article...

It's deeply problematic how much of our political elite has just internalized the softly proto-fascist idea that rural Americans are simply more purely and authentically American than are urbanites, and how this assumption just gets repeated and unquestioned.

"Ours is not the first time in which the Jewish Establishment has disowned and demonized Jewish Leftists." forward.com/culture/7774...

In the future, with multiple political candidates and Cabinet secretaries from both parties now having Nazi tattoos, we are going to have to demand that male politicians publicly disrobe for us so we can inspect them for Nazi ties. No, I do not like it either.

Yet another political candidate with Nazi ties, this time a Democrat. I really miss the days when this was not normal and apparently now bipartisan.

I wish Donald Trump had not posted a video of him dumping excrement on political protesters. But on the other hand, now that I am about to teach Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection to students...

I miss the days when I could reference the latest political figure revealed to be a Nazi supporter, and the person I was speaking to did not have to respond with, "Which one are you talking about?"

I wish it were every single university, but this is still better than I feared. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/u...

Seems bad: www.cnn.com/2025/10/19/u...

Not that it should matter, but Kat Abughazaleh is actually Palestinian and Daniel Biss is actually Israeli, which means they both have a lot more personally at stake than most American politicians. But AIPAC doesn't care, of course.

I miss the days before the law was changed to permit clergy to make explicit political endorsements from houses of worship. www.jta.org/2025/10/20/p...

"Since 2022, meanwhile, the proportion of [British] Jews who identify as anti-Zionists has increased from 8% to 12%." unherd.com/2025/10/the-...

The ADL has yet to comment on this. But they did make the time for a five-tweet thread today about Zohran Mamdani appearing with an imam.

They're edging so close to just blaming the Jews for the death of Charlie Kirk.

The administration that cares so deeply about fighting antisemitism.

As far as I can tell, the ADL and AJC have yet to comment on this.

A very erudite and impressively well-cited Halakhic argument by @motownrabbi.bsky.social against the permissibility of starvation in Gaza as a legally or morally acceptable tool of war. Well worth reading. thelehrhaus.com/timely-thoug...

“There’s no question, it was chutzpadik... I think it turned out to be holy chutzpah.” www.jta.org/2025/10/20/o...

The Republican Party will simultaneously claim that they are prioritizing fighting antisemitism above all else, when it allows them to crack down on higher education and foreign students, and also that the Jewish puppet master is pulling the strings behind all progressive social movements in the US.

A tremendous loss. May his memory be for a blessing. www.jta.org/2025/10/20/o...

This is both utterly horrific and unacceptable, and also far too normal in the West Bank: www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-extre...

My student: "Do people today really think Freud got everything wrong? I mean, the Oedipus stuff is kind of weird, but do they really think Freud got nothing right?" Me: "The legacy of Freud is debated today, and reactions to him range..." My student: "Have the Freud critics heard of Donald Trump?"

This is not even an attempt to couch their war on higher education in some sort of higher principle like "intellectual diversity." This is just "we're targeting leftist professors." They're telling us what they plan to do.

What is the value of polling “AIPAC” and “pro-Israel lobby” separately? Also, who are the 3% of Democratic voters who have a negative view of Doctors Without Borders?

This event has me deeply worried about the future of academic Jewish Studies in this country.

The rabbi at Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan, a prominent Conservative shul in NYC, gave a sermon yesterday in which he explicitly endorsed Cuomo for mayor: pasyn.org/sermons/2025... I kind of miss the days when clergy were not legally permitted to endorse political candidates in sermons.

The same politician who claims to care so deeply about fighting antisemitism, is also blaming his political opposition on the wealthy Jewish puppet master.

Obviously this is bad, but there’s something awfully romantic about an old-fashioned Louvre jewel heist. www.npr.org/2025/10/19/n...

Sometimes it really is what it appears to be.

I’m almost tempted to start describing my politics as “Buberian binational cultural Zionism” just to make everyone on all sides of the aisle hate me.

There's a lesson here, if people were actually inclined to learn it: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

"If this is possible for this photo, it might be possible for letters, diaries. I think a lot hinges on the willingness of society to embrace this, not just the political class. But also individuals and families to confront this." www.dw.com/en/holocaust...

Jewish Studies people: Do not sleep on this story. This is a truly dangerous sign for the future of our academic field. www.idsnews.com/article/2025...

Shkoyach.

“Trump erodes the very institutions that have long provided safety, learning and upward mobility for Jewish families — all the while claiming that he’s protecting Jews.” www.timesofisrael.com/us-jewish-gr...

Almost like there isn't one single community here that speaks in one voice, and we should stop pretending there is.

Walter Benjamin essentially predicted the fascist use of AI in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," but somehow the actual fact of it manages to be even worse.

Spending my Saturday night preparing for a student debate I have to moderate in class on Monday: Is Heidegger's philosophy permanently tainted by his Nazism, or can they be extricated? You know, as one does on Saturday night.

The figure of the nefarious Jewish puppet master functions as a way of avoiding dealing with the organic popularity of genuine movements for social change.