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Commemorating Philip Roth means confronting his limitations head on
(JTA) — Next Sunday marks the 90th anniversary of Philip Roth’s birth. In celebration of the famed novelist’s work, a scholarly conference titled “Roth@90,” sponsored by the Philip Roth Society, will be held starting Wednesday at the Newark Public Library. That will be followed by a weekend of high-profile events — staged readings, panel discussions, a bus tour of Roth’s old Newark neighborhood — co-presented by the library and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
Exactly 10 years ago, we commemorated his 80th birthday in a similar fashion. Dozens of Roth scholars made learned presentations about his work, of which Roth attended exactly zero. Later that week, the author read aloud from his novel “Sabbath’s Theater” in front of hundreds of fans, friends and well wishers. The proceedings were televised on C-Span.
Roth was being acclaimed for having just wound down an exemplary career. With the exception of the Nobel Prize, what garland evaded him? Was there a high-culture literary platform where his name wasn’t a virtual watermark? Could he publish any novel without hundreds of reviews being written in newspapers across the world? Was there a serious fiction writer out there with greater renown?
So much has changed in the decade between the two conferences. To begin with, Roth died in 2018. In that same span, the country witnessed the election of Donald Trump and the fissure it exposed in society in general and the Jewish community in particular. America endured one convulsive racial reckoning after another. Finally, in October of 2017, the #MeToo movement gained massive public salience.
All of those events, along with digital media’s indomitable ascent, have combined to affect and reshape Roth’s literary legacy. That legacy is far less assured than all the (justified) praise and lionizing that will occur this week might suggest.
Let’s start with Jews. The Trump era yielded two seemingly irreconcilable data points. On the one hand, Jewish-Americans endured the Charlottesville riot, the Tree of Life synagogue attack and a stunning rise in antisemitic incidents. On the other, there was staunch support for Trump among Orthodox Jews and supporters of Israel’s right wing.
Leaving that conundrum for others to parse, I simply note that Orthodox Jews and right-wing Zionists are almost completely absent in Roth’s fiction. A young Roth wrote a sensitive portrait of Holocaust survivors who want to start a suburban yeshiva in “Eli the Fanatic.” He also sketched a militant religious-nationalist Zionist in “The Counterlife,” Mordecai Lippman, who, according to Roth biographer Blake Bailey (about whom more below), was based on Elyakim Haetzni, one of the so-called founding fathers of the settlement movement. In the same novel, a version of the narrator’s brother falls under the settlement leader’s sway.
And that’s it, across a half century of writing. For traditionalist Jewish readers, whose political and social influence in the United States and Israel is substantial and growing, Roth’s fiction is not a mirror, nor a signpost, nor a scroll upon which is inscribed some essential truth.
The Jews who populated his stories, the Jews he best understood, were of Ashkenazi descent, white, liberal, assimilated and secular. His courage was to valorize them over and against other Jews who viewed them as defective, lost or even as apostates. Thus Anne Frank in “The Ghost Writer” was portrayed as a patron saint of secular Judaism. Elsewhere, his stories abound in proud, professionally accomplished diaspora Jews. They rarely think about God. Synagogue attendance is reserved strictly for lifecycle events and High Holy Days, if that.
A novelist, of course, is not a political clairvoyant. However, the immediate future of Judaism is being greatly shaped by Jews whose population and influence are growing and whom Roth rarely portrayed. In this manner, another stellar writer like Cynthia Ozick — herself Orthodox and quite attuned to the mindset of her co-religionists — might fare better commercially and emerge as more relevant than her friend in the coming decades.
Roth didn’t just write about Jews. In my book “The Philip Roth We Don’t Know: Sex, Race and Autobiography,” I pointed out that depicting non-Jewish Black people was an unrecognized “obsessional theme” across his 28 novels and 25 short stories. Much to my dismay, I found Roth’s multi-decade treatment of his African and African-American characters often to be crude, thoughtless and sometimes racist.
Familiarize yourself with the degrading portraiture we receive of Black people in “The Great American Novel” (1973), or a short story like “On the Air” (1970), and you might reconsider what Roth was after in “The Human Stain,” in which an academic who is accused of racism turns out to be an African American who had been “passing” as white and Jewish. The book, the 2001 Pen/Faulkner Award winner, is often seen as a sensitive treatment of racial issues in America, and perhaps as the author’s attempt to extend the hand of friendship to another oppressed minority.
In fact, my best guess is that, as with many Jewish writers post-1967, Roth was shaken by the deterioration of the Black-Jewish alliance. His frustrations were reflected in prose that often referenced Black communities in his hometown of Newark but showed little curiosity about their lives or sympathy for their plight.
Obviously, this type of literary rendering of African Americans — or any minority group — is disturbing and dated. Insensitive racial representation inspires calls for publishers to drop authors. They disappear from high-school or college syllabi. This bodes ominously for the afterlives of the titans of post-World War II American fiction, including John Updike, Saul Bellow Bellow and Norman Mailer, all three of whom have been accused of being racially insensitive and worse.
Roth’s marketability also seems to be sailing into a squall regarding gender. As women began demanding an accounting of sexual abuse and misogyny within the media, entertainment and other industries, numerous think-pieces wondered how the author of “Portnoy’s Complaint” — whose libidinous narrator identifies most of the women in his life by debasing nicknames — would fare in such an environment. Would he — should he — be “canceled”?
The question is more complex than his admirers and detractors make it out to be. No doubt, many of Roth’s male characters mistreated women. Accusations of Roth himself doing the same exist, but they are fairly rare, unsubstantiated and contested. The dilemma for researchers is that Roth was a deeply auto-fictional writer. You sense his presence in his stories — especially when protagonists share much of his biography, including Nathan Zuckerman and Peter Tarnopol, and when characters are named “Philip Roth.”
It’s hard not to speculate about the relation between the author and the many misogynistic fellows who cut an erotic swath through his pages. There will, of course, be readers who give him the benefit of the doubt. They might observe that Roth’s toxic males provide evidence of women’s experiences that needs to be explored, not censored.
Not helping him cleanse his reputation were the numerous allegations of sexual misconduct leveled against his hand-picked biographer, Blake Bailey. The ructions engulfing Bailey came to dominate the discourse about Roth, leading to a peculiar cancellation by proxy.
The episode also revealed that Roth had instructed his estate to eventually destroy a massive trove of personal papers he entrusted to Bailey. This led Aimee Pozorski (co-editor of Philip Roth Studies), myself and 20 other Roth scholars to issue a statement reminding his executors that “scholarship can only be advanced when qualified researchers engage freely with essential sources.”
As if all these concerns weren’t enough, his grim prophecies about the demise of an audience for serious literature seem to be coming true. “The book,” Roth worried, “can’t compete with the screen.” Meanwhile, the English major is in a very bad way, and the institution of tenure is under siege. Professors (insufferable as we might be) teach the next generation who to read and how to read. Writers might not like them, but they need them.
Roth is also getting the scrutiny that he was at pains to avoid in his lifetime. His disregard for scholars who might be critical of him always struck me, one such scholar, as misguided. Instead, he surrounded himself with friends — friends who had preternatural access to major media platforms. These friends built upon his own interpretations of his own work. It doesn’t mean they lacked wisdom. It just means that when they talked about Roth, they talked about what Roth wanted them to talk about. To wit: Jewish Newark, his sundry interpretations of his life, his pesky ex-wives and lovers, the close-mindedness of his critics, and so forth.
I think, in this cultural moment, it’s prudent to confront Roth’s limitations head on and chart one’s own path through his fiction. I pitch him to my students as a writer with some racial, religious and sexual hang-ups — who among us is innocent of those charges? I also present him as a bearer of unique and meaningful insights. Let scholars (while they still exist) parade those insights into sunlight.
I’ve tried to illuminate that his fiction was preoccupied, for 50 years, by how individual and collective bodies (like the Jews) change. Transformation, metamorphosis, metempsychosis — his obsession with those themes, I’ve noticed in my classrooms, is shared by Gen Z. If the span between Roth@80 and Roth@90 has taught us anything, it is that Roth was right: Life is about radical, unpredictable flux. Now his own legacy is in flux. I wonder who will read Roth@100.
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The post Commemorating Philip Roth means confronting his limitations head on appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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How Hamas still holds Gaza captive
Almost 10 months after the October 2025 President Trump‑brokered ceasefire and hostage‑release agreement that formally ended the war between Israel and Hamas, the conflict is anything but over.
For there to be real progress, both sides of this discourse need to confront an uncomfortable truth: Palestinians retain real agency even within a profound power imbalance, and Hamas — not just Israeli policy — bears direct responsibility for wrecking Gaza and the Palestinian national project. That means an honest reckoning with a pattern of strategic miscalculation running from the Second Intifada through Oct. 7, and a clear-eyed recognition that until Hamas’s grip on Gaza is broken, two million Palestinians remain its hostages as much as anyone else’s.
Gaza’s conditions continue to deteriorate. What was meant to launch a phased transitional process is paralyzed. The Trump‑created Board of Peace has achieved almost none of its stated objectives. Gaza remains largely destroyed, with the Israeli military now controlling nearly two‑thirds of the territory, expanding well beyond the original “Yellow Line.” Hamas, the fascistic terror group whose catastrophic Oct. 7, 2023 attack unleashed unprecedented suffering on Palestinians in Gaza, is vastly weakened but still rules a third of the Strip, where two million people remain trapped under its totalitarian grip.
Equally troubling is the state of discourse around Israel and Palestine, especially in Western societies like the United States. Many who call themselves “pro‑Palestine” have refused, out of negligence, ignorance, or deliberately, to confront Hamas’s narrative, behavior, and agenda. Yet they played a significant role in worsening and escalating the discourse, promoting overtly pro‑Hamas ideas under slogans of “resistance” while normalizing or excusing the group’s criminality, history, and anti-Palestinian behavior for nearly two years after Oct. 7.
On the other side, many who identify as “pro‑Israel,” whether they are diaspora Jews, non-Jews or Israelis, have insisted on treating or considering all Gazans as Hamas — either supporters of the terror group, endorsers of its actions, or perpetual enemies of Jewish existence. Whether due to dehumanization, misinformation, or difficulty parsing complex evidence, many could not grasp that Gazans, despite their contemporary grievances with Israeli policy or historic ones with Zionism, were deeply antagonistic toward Hamas long before Oct. 7 and have turned against the terror group en masse since then.
As a Palestinian who spent much of his childhood in Gaza, and lost many family members in Israeli attacks, I want to reach both these camps: those who consider themselves pro‑Palestine, as well as those in the pro-Israel camp who need to see how Israeli policy choices have influenced Hamas’s rise and control in Gaza.
For the pro-Palestine group, introspection, accountability, and soul-searching are urgently needed to assess historic and contemporary Palestinian failures, including Oct. 7, the latest tragic iteration of strategic miscalculation. Hamas has catastrophically damaged the Palestinian national project, destroying hopes for statehood, weakening pragmatic leadership, empowering far-right forces in Israel, and eroding Palestinian values and social cohesion from within. Yes, there is an imbalance of power between Israel and the Palestinians. But within that imbalance exists meaningful space for Palestinian agency. Acknowledging this is not “blaming the victims,” as detractors claim; it is the first step toward empowering Palestinians to make decisions and choices that improve their prospects and outcomes.
Needed: An honest critique of Hamas
Hamas embedded itself across Gazan society by weaponizing religion and social services, especially in the refugee camps that had become mini-cities. Crucially, and often forgotten, Hamas’s first victims were Palestinians, not Israelis — only after 1987 did Israel become its primary target.
I watched the group’s rise in Gaza City firsthand, including encounters my own family had with senior Hamas figures, without falling into its grip. The Second Intifada, the 2005 disengagement, and Hamas’s violent takeover on June 14, 2007 — the very day I had my U.S. political asylum interview, making me the first Gazan granted asylum on the basis of Hamas’s control of the territory — are the hinge points that led to Oct. 7.
As I lay out at greater length in my new book, Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages, this is a story of Oslo’s optimism curdling into the trauma of the Second Intifada, the collapse of the political process, and Hamas’s steady rise to power. Much of today’s pro-Palestinian discourse is saturated with critique of Israel but starved of honest critique of Hamas, and of the Palestinian leaders, groups, and elites who have failed and even betrayed their own people.
The “pro‑Palestine” community, especially diaspora Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians in the U.S., refuses to face this reality. A recent Pew survey found that 44% of American Muslims say they support Hamas, a figure that is likely an undercount based on my negative experiences in trying to promote the kind of perspectives I offer here. An April poll found that over 40% of Americans aged 18 to 34 said they supported Hamas over Israel.
My plea to the pro-Palestinian movement
These numbers prove pro‑Palestine discourse is in shambles. Failed, ineffective, and morally reprehensible types of armed “resistance” like taking women and children as hostages on Oct. 7 are glorified. Hamas is excused, supported, and whitewashed. Extreme anti‑Zionism is now the mainstream, increasingly merging seamlessly with antisemitism. And there is no realism or pragmatism; no viable solutions that actually help Gazans, and a discourse that is completely detached from the very people it proclaims to champion.
The gap between what Gazans think, feel, want, and believe is wider than ever from the majority of the pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist movements in the Western world. When Hamas tortures, beats, kills, and abuses Gazans, they are ignored at best, or labeled collaborators, traitors, and worthy of execution at worst. For the most part, Palestinians in Gaza have devolved into being mere pawns — convenient elements of broader anti-Western, post-colonial, anti-capitalist, and social-justice narratives that have little to do with actually helping Gazans.
This is a plea to those who genuinely care about the Palestinian people: learn the bare minimum about the most destructive force in contemporary Palestinian history. Separate the Palestinian people’s just and urgent aspirations for freedom and prosperity from Hamas, Jihadi Islamism and violent extremism. Until that is done, Hamas will continue to hold two million hostages in Gaza.
The post How Hamas still holds Gaza captive appeared first on The Forward.
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A play about racism in America was a hit in Warsaw in 1935
„מיסיסיפּי“ פֿון לײב מלאך האָט געבראַכט די אַמעריקאַנער ראַסע־פּראָבלעם אױף דער ייִדישער בינע אין פּױלן
סקאָטסבאָראָ, אַ שטעטל אין אַלאַבאַמע, איז אין די 1930ער יאָרן באַקאַנט געװאָרן איבער דער גאַנצער װעלט צוליב דעם געריכט־פּראָצעס איבער נײַן אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקאַנער יונגע לײַט, װעלכע זײַנען פֿאַלש באַשולדיקט געװאָרן אין פֿאַרגװאַלדיקן צװײ יונגע װײַסע פֿרױען.
די געריכט־פּראָצעסן האָבן זיך געצויגן פֿון 1931 ביז 1937 און האָבן אַרויסגערופֿן אַ סך אױפֿמערק צוליב זײערע אױסגעשפּראָכן ראַסיסטישע פּניות. ייִדישע ליטעראַטן האָבן געװידמעט דעם דאָזיקן ענין אַ היפּשע צאָל אַרטיקלען, רעפּאָרטאַזשן און ליטעראַרישע װערק.
צװישן די קינסטלערישע אָפּקלאַנגען אױף דעם סקאָטסבאָראָ־ענין איז געװען די דראַמע פֿון לײב מלאך (אַריה לײב זאַלצמאַן, 1894־1936) „מיסיסיפּי“, װאָס דער באַרימטער פּױליש־ייִדישער רעזשיסאָר מיכאל װײַכערט האָט אױפֿגעפֿירט אינעם װאַרשעװער „יונג־טעאַטער“ אין 1935.
דער טעקסט פֿון דער פּיעסע איז פֿאַרעפֿנטלעכט געװאָרן נאָך מלאכס טױט אין לאָס־אַנדזשעלעס אין 1949. איצט איז „מיסיסיפּי“ אַרױס אין דער ענגלישער איבערזעצונג פֿון עלען פּערעצמאַן און אַליסע קװינט, אונטער דער רעדאַקציע פֿון אַליסע קװינט.
קװינטס גרונטיק געפֿאָרשטער הקדמה דערצײלט די געשיכטע פֿון דער דאָזיקער מערקװירקידער אױפֿפֿירונג.
„מיסיסיפּי“, האַלט קװינט, איז אינטערעסאַנט הײַנט ניט אַזױ װי אַ װערק פֿון קונסט נאָר װי אַ „װערק פֿון דער הומאַניסטישער עמפּאַטיע“ און די ערשטע פּיעסע װעגן אַמעריקאַנער ראַסיזם אױף דער פּױלישער (ניט נאָר ייִדישער) בינע.
אָבער װײַכערטס טעאַטראַלישע אױפֿפֿירונג איז טאַקע יאָ געװען אַ װיכטיקע טעאַטראַלע דערשײַנונג. די 1930ער יאָרן זײַנען געװען די בלי־תּקופֿה אין דער ייִדישער טעאַטער־געשיכטע, װען דער ייִדישער טעאַטער איז געװען אָפֿן צו אַנדערע קולטורן, דערקלערט קװינט. דעמאָלט האָט מען אױפֿגעפֿירט אױף ייִדיש דראַמאַטישע װערק פֿונעם אַמעריקאַנער דראַמאַטורג יודזשין אָ׳ניל, דעם פֿראַנצױזישן שרײַבער ראָמען ראָלאַן, דעם דײַטשישן מחבר פֿרידריך װאָלף און אַנדערע.
לכתּחילה איז װײַכערט ניט געװען זיכער, אַז דער ענין פֿון ראַסיזם אין אַמעריקע װעט געפֿינען אַן אָפּקלאַנג בײַם פּױליש־ייִדישן עולם. אָבער ער האָט געגלױבט, אַז זײַנע „פּראָגרעסיװע צושױער“ װעלן דערקענען אין די אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקאַנער פּערסאָנאַזשן פּשוטע מענטשן און אַרבעטער גלײַך װי די פּױלישע ייִדן.
„מיסיסיפּי“ האָט װײַכערט אױפֿגעפֿירט אינעם סטיל פֿון אַװאַנגאַרד. די פּיעסע האָט העכער װי 30 פּערסאָנאַזשן, װאָס זײַנען געטײלט אין צװײ גרופּעס, שװאַרצע און װײַסע. די פּױליש־ייִדישע אַקטיאָרן האָבן געשפּילט אין „בלעקפֿײס“, מיט שװאַרץ־געשמירטע פּנימער.
הײַנט באַטראַכט מען אַזאַ שטיק װי אַ סימן פֿון ראַסיזם, אָבער עס װאָלט געװען ניט קאָרעקט צו משפּטן דעם ייִדישן טעאַטער אין פּױלן אין די 1930ער יאָרן לױט די איצטיקע השׂגות.
מען האָט געשפּילט דעם ספּעקטאַקל אױף דרײַ רונדע בינעס, געשטעלט אין דער מיט פֿונעם זאַל. די צוקוקער האָבן געדאַרפֿט פֿאָלגן דאָס ליכט, װאָס האָט באַשײַנט אײן בינע נאָך דער צװײטער, װוּ פֿאַרשײדענע גרופּעס אַקטיאָרן האָבן געשפּילט עפּיזאָדן פֿון דער דראַמע. דער עולם האָט זיך געפֿילט אין דער מיט פֿון די געשעענישן, װאָס האָבן זיך אַנטפּלעקט אַרום זײ.
די דאָזיקע בינע־אַראַנזשירונג האָט באַטאָנט דעם קאָנטראַסט צװישן דער „װײַסער“ און דער „שװאַרצער“ װעלט. אין אײן עפּיזאָד זעט מען װאָס ס׳קומט פֿאָר אױף דער באַן צװישן די אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקאַנער און די װײַסע פֿרױען, דערנאָך װערט מען איבערגעטראָגן אין דער דירה פֿון די פֿרױען, װוּ זײ באַדינען זײערע װײַסע מאַנצבלישע „קליענטן“; װײַטער רוקט זיך די האַנדלונג אינעם געריכטזאַל, און אַזױ װײַטער. יעדער עפּיזאָד האָט אַן אײגענע דראַמאַטישע אינטריגע, װאָס האַלט די צוקוקערס געשפּאַנט.
מלאך איז געװען אַ געניטער זשורנאַליסט און האָט געשריבן רעפּאָרטאַזשן פֿון פֿאַרשײדענע לענדער פֿון אײראָפּע, אַמעריקע און פֿון ארץ־ישׂראל. ער האָט אָנגעזאַמלט מאַטעריאַלן װעגן דעם סקאָטסבאָראָ־ענין, װאָס איז צו יענער צײַט נאָך ניט געהאַט פֿאַרענדיקט געװאָרן.
מלאך האָט באַשלאָסן ניט צו שרײַבן קײן „דראַמאַטישן רעפּאָרטאַזש“ און האָט אױסגעטראַכט אײניקע פּרטים, װאָס האָבן אים דערלאָזט דערקלערן דעם אַמעריקאַנער פּאָליטישן און געזעלשאַפֿטלעכן קאָנטעקסט פֿאַרן פּױליש־ייִדישן עולם.
אין דעם שײכות קאָן מען זיך דערמאָנען אָן אַן אַנדער פּיעסע פֿון די 1930ער יאָרן אינעם זשאַנער פֿון געריכט־רעפּאָרטאַזש, אַלטער קאַציזנעס „שװאַרצבאַרד“. פֿאַר זײַן פּיעסע האָט קאַציזנע גענוצט מאַטעריאַלן פֿונעם פּאַריזער משפּט איבער שלום שוואַרצבאַרדן — דעם ייִדישן זייגערמאַכער, וועלכער האָט דערהרגעט דעם אוקראַיִנישן נאַציאָנאַליסט סימאָן פּעטלוראַ כּדי זיך נוקם צו זײַן פֿאַר די בלוטיקע פּאָגראָמען בעתן בירגערקריג אין אוקראַיִנע אין 1918־1919. דער פֿראַנצױזישער געריכט האָט אים דערקלערט פֿאַר אומשולדיק.
אין 1934 האָט די פּױלישע מאַכט פֿאַרװערט צו שפּילן „שװאַרצבאַנד“ אין װאַרשע װײַל מען האָט מורא געהאַט פֿאַר אוקראַיִנישע נאַציאָנאַליסטן אין פּױלן. אין דער געשפּאַנטער פּאָליטישער אַטמאָספֿער פֿון די 1930ער יאָרן האָט מען געדאַרפֿט זײַן אָפּגעהיט, און מלאך און װײַכערט האָבן אױסגעקליבן אַ „פּאַרעװען“ קעפּל, „מיסיסיפּי“. דאָס װאָרט סקאָטסבאָראָ איז צו יענער צײַט באַלאָדן געװאָרן מיט לינקע פּאָליטישע אַסאָציאַציעס.
סך־הכּל האָט מען געשפּילט „מיסיסיפּי“ בערך 200 מאָל אין פֿאַרשײדענע שטעט אין פּױלן. די ייִדישע פּרעסע פֿון כּלערלײ פּאָליטישע שאַטירונגען אױף ייִדיש און פּױליש האָט מיט התלהבֿות געלױבט דעם ספּעקטאַקל. דער קריטיקער משה קאַנפֿער האָט געשריבן, אַז „ייִדן און אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקאַנער זעען אין זיך אַ קעגנזײַטיקע אָפּשפּיגלונג פֿון אײנעם אינעם צװײטן“.
די ענגלישע איבערזעצונג איז זײער פֿליסיק. די רײד פֿון די פּערסאָנאַזשן קלינגט װי די אַמעריקאַנער שמועסשפּראַך פֿון די 1930ער יאָרן, װאָס איז גוט באַקאַנט לױט די דראַמאַטישע װערק פֿון יענער צײַט. כּדי אָפּצוהיטן דעם צײַטגײַסט האָט די איבערזעצערין באַשלאָסן צו נוצן די װערטער װי „נעגראָ“ און אַפֿילו דאָס „נ־װאָרט“, װאָס זענען הײַנט װי באַלײדעװדיקע נעמען פֿאַר אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקאַנער.
אַן אַנדער פּראָבלעם פֿאַר דער איבערזעצונג האָט צו טאָן מיט די ענגלישע װערטער, אַזעלכע װי „מיס“, „קאָנדאָקטאָר“, „באָי“, מיט װעלכע מלאך האָט באַפֿעפֿערט זײַן טעקסט כּדי צו שאַפֿן אַן אַמעריקאַנער קאָלאָריט. אין דער איבערזעצונג זײַנען די דאָזיקע װערטער באַצײכנט געװאָרן מיט שטערנדלעך.
דער ענין פֿון ראַסע און ראַסע־באַציִונגען איז אין די לעצטע פּאָר צענדליק יאָר געװאָרן אַ װיכטיקע טעמע אין ייִדיש־פֿאָרשונג. דאָס איז אַ ניצלעכער מעטאָדאָלאָגישער קוקװינקל, װאָס לאָזט פֿון דאָס נײַ באַטראַכטן די מאָדערנע ייִדיש־קולטור. אָבער ביז הײַנט האָט מען דער עיקר באַהאַנדלט דעם אַמעריקאַנער מאַטעריאַל.
די פּובליקאַציע פֿון „מיסיסיפּי“ איז אַ װיכטיקער בײַטראָג אין דער דאָזיקער בראַנזשע פֿון ייִדיש־פֿאָרשונג. זי באַװײַזט, אַז די פּראָבלעם פֿון ראַסיזם אין אַמעריקע האָט געהאַט אַן אָפּקלאַנג אױך בײַ ייִדן אין מיזרח־אײראָפּע.
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Nithya Raman, LA mayoral candidate who clashed with DSA on Israel, wins their endorsement
Ever since Councilmember Nithya Raman’s last-minute entry into the Los Angeles mayoral race, questions have loomed about her relationship with the Democratic Socialists of America — and whether her stance on Israel would chill the group’s support for her underdog campaign.
Raman, a dues-paying DSA member, had criticized the group for a statement the national organization made after Oct. 7. In 2024, she was censured by the LA chapter for courting a pro-Israel group in her campaign for re-election to city council.
But following weeks of debate in the local chapter, Raman won its official endorsement Wednesday, paving the way for the leftist group to organize for her campaign to unseat incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.
The endorsement, which reportedly came with the support of more than 60 percent of some 1,400 voting members, vindicated Raman’s breaking with the group on Israel and other issues. It also comes after the councilmember stated definitively that she believed the war in Gaza constituted a genocide — a basic litmus test inside the hardline anti-Zionist group.
Raman, 45, seemed to allude to the conflict in a statement thanking the organization.
“This endorsement means something because of what it represents: a coalition of people who don’t always agree on every question, but who agree that LA needs real change,” Raman wrote on Instagram, adding. “It’s not about everyone thinking alike. It’s about building power together toward the same goal.”
The contentious endorsement process around Raman, one of the group’s national success stories and its first member to win citywide office in Los Angeles — three more have since joined her on city council — underscored the fierce ideological commitments in the DSA. Yet its outcome may not be entirely in her favor, as mainstream Jewish groups have come to hold DSA and its candidates in contempt.
Raman has rarely fit neatly into the group’s political conventions. On Oct. 7, 2023, when more than 1,200 people were killed in Israel, the national DSA club publicly blamed Israel for incurring the Hamas-led attack. Raman — whose district included heavily Jewish neighborhoods like Hancock Park and Sherman Oaks — had quickly issued a statement standing with her Jewish and Israeli constituents. A few days later, she also disavowed the DSA response, calling it “unacceptably devoid of empathy.”
Her positions on the Middle East frustrated Israel’s supporters, too. In June 2024, she helped pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire and release of hostages, infuriating the local Jewish federation and other Jewish groups, which said she was selling out Israel’s ability to defend itself.
Nevertheless, she earned the backing of Democrats for Israel-Los Angeles in her run for re-election that year, with the president of the liberal Zionist group crediting her statement that Israel had a right to exist and her general engagement with Jewish constituents. Outraged, DSA’s members voted to censure her.
In the runup to June’s mayoral primary, Raman joined the livestream of leftist firebrand Hasan Piker, telling him she agreed that it was committing genocide in Gaza. But DSA did not endorse any candidate in the June 2026 primary — even as Raman was locked in a tight race with the conservative reality star Spencer Pratt for a spot in the November runoff. (Another DSA candidate, Rae Huang, placed a distant fifth.)
Asked whether she believed Israel was an apartheid state, Raman said, “Yeah, I think that they’re treating people unfairly, that they’re not treating people equally, and I’m critical of that.”
Israel is not the only wedge issue for Raman in DSA. She split with the group — and her democratic socialist peers on city council — on a local “mansion tax,” saying that it discouraged new multifamily housing construction. And she was one of only two councilmembers who railed against a controversial multibillion-dollar expansion of the LA convention center — even as the other DSA members, who have strong backing from the building trades unions, voted for it.
The debate within DSA was framed as ideological purity versus political pragmatism. Bass, a historically unpopular incumbent whose tenure included the most catastrophic wildfire the city had seen in decades, has governed as a centrist Democrat; though Raman is broadly aligned with DSA policy, some of the group’s members who opposed the endorsement wrote in a communist magazine this week that it should not be “rewarded based on ideological proximity.”
The DSA’s endorsement was the second major pickup for Raman in the last week; the powerful hospitality workers union, Unite Here Local 11, officially threw its support behind Raman Tuesday, though organized labor still largely backs Bass.
Now a new question emerges: whether the endorsement of a group with a few thousand members came too late. Peer-to-peer betting markets currently have Bass as a roughly 2-to-1 favorite.
Sean Wakasa, co-chair of the Los Angeles DSA chapter, told The New York Times the group was warming to the challenge.
“We have thousands of members who are ready to organize, talk to their neighbors, knock on doors and build power to shake up Los Angeles and build a brighter future,” Mr. Wakasa said.
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