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Golden Age of American Jewry May Be Ending, But Jews Thrive in Meritocracy
Reading from a Torah scroll in accordance with Sephardi tradition. Photo: Sagie Maoz via Wikimedia Commons.
The headlines seem bleak for Jews: “The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending”; “Jewish Erasure From American Life”; “The Vanishing.” The articles tell a consistent story: “Suddenly, everywhere you look, the Jews are disappearing”; “Antisemitism on the right and left threatens to bring to a close an unprecedented period of safety and prosperity for Jewish Americans …”
The data seem to support this assessment. Universities are rejecting Jewish applicants in numbers reminiscent of the days of quotas. Jewish representation in public offices is decreasing. Jobs in many areas seem to be closed to Jews in favor of other, more favored, minorities.
Honorific positions in elite cultural institutions — such as museums and orchestras — are being offered to leaders of other groups; university presidencies and deanships, which had been closed to Jews until the 1960s and then opened up to them in the 1990s, once again seem closed.
Academic prizes, such as MacArther and Guggenheim awards, have far fewer Jewish winners than in the past. Book publishers are rejecting Jewish authors. Even Hollywood, which was largely invented by Jews, is imposing quotas on Jewish filmmakers and other artists.
This trend, supported by precise numbers, is documented in an article by Jacob Savage in Tablet, and confirmed by several others, including a cover story in The Atlantic by Franklin Foer.
The facts, though, tell only part of a more complex phenomenon. They tell the part in which success is judged by how others — institutions and individuals — select the winners. They don’t, though, tell the equally remarkable story of persistent Jewish accomplishments in areas where success is not dependent on being picked by others — where success is self-determined and self-proving, in an open and free-market economy, without barriers to entry.
Jews are thriving in areas in which success is based entirely on meritocratic criteria, such as creativity, innovation, talent, and hard work. There has been no discernible reduction in Jewish inventors, musicians, investors, entrepreneurs, groundbreaking scientists, or chess champions.
Jewish doctors are still saving lives. Jewish lawyers are winning cases. Jewish comedians are making people laugh. Jewish podcasters are attracting large audiences. As long as the criteria is objective and identity-blind, Jews thrive.
The same is generally true of Asian Americans. Jews are a tiny percentage of the American population — between 2 percent and 3 percent, depending on the criteria — and so when their numbers exceed that percentage, Jews are accused of being “overrepresented“ and taking the rightful places of larger minority groups.
This was the same argument made in czarist Russia and other nations that imposed the notorious “numerus clausus.”
There are course limits to the kind of success that can be achieved in the face of discrimination by others who get to pick applicants for routes to success. Reduced Jewish admission to universities, reduced publication opportunities for Jewish authors, reduced scientific honors will eventually have an impact even on self-determined Jewish success. This was certainly true in past eras of anti-Jewish quotas.
As long as the United States has a free-market economic system with few barriers to entry, Jews — and others — denied admission to restricted organizations will be able to achieve a modicum of success. That success will enable them to fight against other discriminatory measures, as wealthy, self-made Jewish contributors are now doing with regard to universities.
So the water in the Jewish glass is lower than it has been during our “golden age.” It is, though, half full. Not half empty. It will remain at least half full as long as our free-market economy allows discriminated-against individuals to thrive in areas where meritocracy is rewarded with success.
Today’s culture, though, is determined to destroy what is left of meritocracy, because it is seen as undercutting the identity-oriented diversity, equity, and inclusion criteria for selection and success.
Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School, and is the author of “Guilt by Accusation” and host of the “The Dershow” podcast. Follow Alan Dershowitz on Twitter (@AlanDersh) and on Facebook (@AlanMDershowitz). A version of this article was originally published by The New York Sun.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
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