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How Jewish comedy found religion, from Philip Roth to ‘Broad City’
(JTA) — In the 2020 comedy “Shiva Baby,” a 20-something young woman shows up at a house of Jewish mourners and gently offers her condolences. When she finds her mother in the kitchen, they chat about the funeral and the rugelach before the daughter asks, “Mom, who died?”
While “Shiva Baby” explores themes of sexuality and gender, the comedy almost never comes at the expense of Jewish tradition, which is treated seriously by its millennial writer and director Emma Seligman (born in 1995) even as the shiva-goers collide. It’s far cry from the acerbic way an author raised during the Depression like Philip Roth lampooned a Jewish wedding or a baby boomer like Jerry Seinfeld mocked a bris.
These generational differences are explored in Jenny Caplan’s new book, “Funny, You Don’t Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials.” A religion scholar, Caplan writes about the way North American Jewish comedy has evolved since World War II, with a focus on how humorists treat Judaism as a religion. Her subjects range from writers and filmmakers who came of age shortly after the war (who viewed Judaism as “a joke at best and an actual danger at worst”) to Generation X and millennials, whose Jewish comedy often recognizes “the power of community, the value of family tradition, and the way that religion can serve as a port in an emotional storm.”
“I see great value in zeroing in on the ways in which Jewish humorists have engaged Jewish practices and their own Jewishness,” Caplan writes. “It tells us something (or perhaps it tells us many somethings) about the relationship between Jews and humor that goes deeper than the mere coincidence that a certain humorist was born into a certain family.”
Caplan is the chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She has a master’s of theological studies degree from Harvard Divinity School and earned a Ph.D. in religion from Syracuse University.
In a conversation last week, we spoke about the Jewishness of Jerry Seinfeld, efforts by young women comics to reclaim the “Jewish American Princess” label, and why she no longer shows Woody Allen movies in her classrooms.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity
[Note: For the purpose of her book and our conversation, this is how Caplan isolates the generations: the Silent Generation (b. 1925-45), the baby boom (1946-65), Generation X (1966-79) and millennials (1980–95).]
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Let me ask how you got into this topic.
Jenny Caplan: I grew up in a family where I was just sort of surrounded by this kind of material. My dad is a comedic actor and director who went to [Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s] Clown College. My degrees were more broadly in American religion, not Jewish studies, but I was really interested in the combination of American religion and popular culture. When I got to Syracuse and it came time to start thinking about my larger project and what I wanted to do, I proposed a dissertation on Jewish humor.
The key to your book is how Jewish humor reflects the Jewish identity and compulsions of four sequential generations. Let’s start with the Silent Generation, which is sandwiched between the generation whose men were old enough to fight in World War II and the baby boomers who were born just after the war.
The hallmark of the Silent Generation is that they were old enough to be aware of the war, but they were mostly too young to serve. Every time I told people what I was writing about, they would say Woody Allen or Philip Roth, two people of roughly the same generation.
In “Funny, You Don’t Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials,” Jenny Caplan explores how comics treated religion from the end of World War II to the 21st century. (Courtesy)
The Roth story you focus on is “Eli, the Fanatic” from 1959, about an assimilated Jewish suburb that is embarrassed and sort of freaks out when an Orthodox yeshiva, led by a Holocaust survivor, sets up in town.
Roth spent the first 20 to 30 years of his career dodging the claim of being a self-loathing Jew and bad for the Jews. But the actual social critique of “Eli, the Fanatic” is so sharp. It is about how American Jewish comfort comes at the expense of displaced persons from World War II and at the expense of those for whom Judaism is a real thriving, living religious practice.
That’s an example you offer when you write that the Silent Generation “may have found organized religion to be a dangerous force, but they nevertheless wanted to protect and preserve the Jewish people.” I think that would surprise people in regards to Roth, and maybe to some degree Woody Allen.
Yeah, it surprised me. They really did, I think, share that postwar Jewish sense of insecurity about ongoing Jewish continuity, and that there’s still an existential threat to the ongoing existence of Jews.
I hear that and I think of Woody Allen’s characters, atheists who are often on the lookout for antisemitism. But you don’t focus on Allen as the intellectual nebbish of the movies. You look at his satire of Jewish texts, like his very funny “Hassidic Tales, With a Guide to Their Interpretation by the Noted Scholar” from 1970, which appeared in The New Yorker. It’s a parody of Martin Buber’s “Tales of the Hasidim” and sentimental depictions of the shtetl, perhaps like “Fiddler on the Roof.” A reader might think he’s just mocking the tradition, but you think there’s something else going on.
He’s not mocking the tradition as much as he’s mocking a sort of consumerist approach to the tradition. There was this sort of very superficial attachment to Buber’s “Tales of the Hasidim.” Allen’s satire is not a critique of the traditions of Judaism, it’s a critique of the way that people latch onto things like the Kabbalah and these new English translations of Hasidic stories without any real depth of thought or intellect. Intellectual hypocrisy seems to be a common theme in his movies and in his writing. It’s really a critique of organized religion, and it’s a critique of institutions, and it’s a critique of the power of institutions. But it’s not a critique of the concept of religion.
The idea of making fun of the wise men and their gullible followers reminds me of the folk tales of Chelm, which feature rabbis and other Jewish leaders who use Jewish logic to come to illogical conclusions.
Yes.
You write that the baby boomers are sort of a transition between the Silent Generation and a later generation: They were the teenagers of the counterculture, and warned about the dangers of empty religion, but also came to consider religion and tradition as valuable. But before you get there, you have a 1977 “Saturday Night Live” skit in which a bris is performed in the back seat of a luxury car, and the rabbi who performs it is portrayed as what you call an absolute sellout.
Exactly. You know: Institutional religion is empty and it’s hollow, it’s dangerous and it’s seductive.
Jerry Seinfeld, born in 1954, is seen as an icon of Jewish humor, but to me is an example of someone who never depicts religion as a positive thing. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
“Seinfeld” is more a show about New York than it is necessarily a show about anything Jewish. The New York of Seinfeld is very similar to the New York of Woody Allen, peopled almost entirely by white, middle-class, attractive folks. It’s a sort of Upper West Side myopia.
But there’s the bris episode, aired in 1993, and written by Larry Charles. Unless you are really interested in the medium, you may not know much about Larry Charles, because he stays behind the camera. But he also goes on to do things like direct Bill Maher’s anti-religion documentary “Religulous,” and there’s a real strong case for him as having very negative feelings about organized religion which feels like a holdover from the Silent Generation. And so in that episode you have Kramer as the Larry Charles stand-in, just opining about the barbaric nature of the circumcision and trying to save this poor baby from being mutilated.
The few references to actual Judaism in “Seinfeld” are squirmy. I am thinking of the 1995 episode in which a buffoon of a rabbi blurts out Elaine’s secrets on a TV show. That was written by Larry David, another boomer, whose follow-up series, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is similarly known for its irreverence toward Judaism. But you say David can also surprise you with a kind of empathy for religion.
For the most part, he’s classic, old school, anti-organized religion. There’s the Palestinian Chicken episode where the Jews are rabidly protesting the existence of a Palestinian-run chicken restaurant near a Jewish deli, and where his friend Funkhouser won’t play golf on Shabbos until Larry gets permission by bribing the rabbi with the Palestinian chicken. There, rabbis are ridiculous and can be bought and religion is hollow and this is all terrible.
But then there’s this bat mitzvah montage where for one moment in the entire run of this show, Larry seems happy and in a healthy relationship and fulfilled and enjoying life.
That’s where he falls in love with Loretta Black during a bat mitzvah and imagines a happy future with her.
It’s so startling: It is the most human we ever see Larry over the run of the show, and I believe that was the season finale for the 2007 season. It was much more in line with what we’ve been seeing from a lot of younger comedians at that point, which was religion as an anchor in a good way — not to pull you down but to keep you grounded.
So for Generation X, as you write, Judaism serves “real, emotional, or psychological purpose for the practitioners.”
I wouldn’t actually call it respect but religion is an idea that’s not just something to be mocked and relegated to the dustbin. I’m not saying that Generation X is necessarily more religious, but they see real power and value in tradition and in certain kinds of family experiences. So, a huge amount of the humor can still come at the expense of your Jewish mother or your Jewish grandmother, but the family can also be the thing that is keeping you grounded, and frequently through some sort of religious ritual.
Who exemplifies that?
My favorite example is the 2009 Jonathan Tropper novel, “This Is Where I Leave You.” I’m so disappointed that the film adaptation of that sucked a lot of the Jewish identity out of the story, so let’s stick with the novel. In that book, where a family gathers for their father’s shiva, the characters are horrible people in a dysfunctional family writ large. They lie to each other. They backstab each other. But in scene where the protagonist Judd describes standing up on the bimah [in synagogue] to say Kaddish [the Mourner’s Prayer] after the death of his father, and the way he talks about this emotional catharsis that comes from saying the words and hearing the congregation say the words — it’s a startling moment of clarity in a book where these characters are otherwise just truly reprehensible.
Adam Sandler was born in 1966, the first year of Generation X, and his “Chanukah Song” seems like such a touchstone for his generation and the ones that follow. It’s not about religious Judaism, but in listing Jewish celebrities, it’s a statement of ethnic pride that Roth or Woody Allen couldn’t imagine.
It’s the reclamation of Jewish identity as something great and cool and fun and hip and wonderful and absolutely not to be ashamed of.
From left, Ilana Glazer, Abbi Jacobson and Seth Green in an episode of “Broad City” parodying Birthright Israel. (Screenshot from Comedy Central)
Which brings us to “Broad City,” which aired between 2014 and 2019. It’s about two 20-something Jewish women in New York who, in the case of Ilana Glazer’s character, anyway, are almost giddy about being Jewish and embrace it just as they embrace their sexuality: as just liberating. Ilana even upends the Jewish mother cliche by loving her mother to death.
That’s the episode with Ilana at her grandmother’s shiva, which also has the B plot where Ilana and her mother are shopping for underground illegal handbags. They spend most of the episode snarking at each other and fighting with each other and her mother’s a nag and Ilana is a bumbling idiot. But at the moment that the cops show up, and try to nab them for having all of these illegal knockoff handbags, the two of them are a team. They are an absolute unit of destructive force against these hapless police officers.
I think all of your examples of younger comics are women, who have always had fraught relationships with Jewish humor, both as practitioners and as the target of jokes. You write about “The JAP Battle” rap from “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” which both leans into the stereotype of the Jewish-American Princess — spoiled, acquisitive, “hard as nails” — and tries to reclaim it without the misogyny.
Rachel Bloom’s character Rebecca in “Girlfriend” self-identifies as a JAP, but she doesn’t actually fit the category. It’s her mother, Naomi, who truly is the Philip Roth, “Marjorie Morningstar,” Herman Wouk model of a JAP. So Bloom is kind of using the term, but you can’t repurpose the term when the original is still there.
So as an alternative, I offer up a new term: the Modern Ashkenazi American Woman. It’s very New York, it’s very East Coast, it’s very particular to a type of upbringing and community that in the 1950s and ’60s would have been almost exclusively Conservative Jews, and then may have become a bit more Reform as we’ve gotten into the ’90s and 2000s. They went to the JCC. They probably went to Jewish summer camp.
But even that doesn’t even really speak to the American sense of what Jewish is anymore, because American Jews have become increasingly racially and culturally diverse.
There is also something that’s happening historically with Generation X, and that’s the distance from the two major Jewish events of the 20th century, which is the Holocaust and the creation of Israel.
The Silent Generation and baby boomers still had a lingering sense of existential dread — the sense that we’re not so far removed from an attempted total annihilation of Jews. Gen X and millennials are so far removed from the Holocaust that they don’t feel that same fear.
But the real battleground we’re seeing in contemporary American Judaism is about the relationship to Israel. For baby boomers and even for some older members of Gen X, there’s still a sense that you can criticize Israel, but at the end of the day, it’s your duty to ultimately support Israel’s right to exist. And I think millennials and Zoomers [Gen Z] are much more comfortable with the idea of Israel being illegitimate.
Have you seen that in comedy?
I certainly think you can see the leading edge of that in some millennial stuff. The “Jews on a Plane” episode of “Broad City” is an absolute excoriation of Birthright Israel, and does not seem particularly interested in softening its punches about the whole idea of Jews going to Israel. I think we can see a trend in that direction, where younger American Jewish comedians do not see that as punching down.
You’re teaching a class on Jewish humor. What do your undergraduates find funny? Now that Woody Allen is better known for having married his adoptive daughter and for the molestation allegations brought by another adoptive daughter, do they look at his classic films and ask, “Why are you teaching us this guy?”
For the first time I’m not including Woody Allen. I had shown “Crimes and Misdemeanors” for years because I think it’s his most theological film. I think it’s a great film. And then a couple years ago, I backed off, because some students were responding that it was hard to look at him with all the baggage. He’s still coming up in conversation because you can’t really talk about the people who came after him without talking about him, but for the first time I’m not having them actually watch or read any of his stuff.
They have found things funny that I didn’t expect them to, and they have not found things funny that I would have thought they would. They laughed their way through “Yidl mitn fidl,” the 1936 Yiddish musical starring Molly Picon. I also thought they’d enjoy the Marx Brothers’ “Duck Soup” and they did not laugh once. Some of that is the fact that Groucho’s delivery is just so fast.
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The post How Jewish comedy found religion, from Philip Roth to ‘Broad City’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Beyond the Headlines: What Is Actually Happening in Gaza Right Now
A Red Cross vehicle, escorted by a van driven by a Hamas terrorist, moves in an area within the so-called “yellow line” to which Israeli troops withdrew under the ceasefire, as Hamas says it continues to search for the bodies of deceased hostages seized during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, in Gaza City, Nov. 12, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alk
After Israel recovered the remains of Ran Gvili, the last hostage in Gaza, the Gaza-Egypt border crossing at Rafah has been re-opened.
Gvili’s body was found by Israeli forces buried in a Palestinian cemetery. Though Hamas claims its assistance was critical to finding the body, it in fact did nothing whatsoever to assist. The body’s location was discovered by Israeli intelligence after it was determined that several members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad knew where it was, one of whom was captured in a special operation.
The cemetery was adjacent to the Yellow Line in Gaza, separating Israeli-controlled territory and Hamas-controlled territory. Operating there required the Israelis to cross the Yellow Line, and it took approximately one month to reach an agreement with Hamas to allow this to happen without fighting. Approximately 250 bodies were collected and checked before Israeli troops found the body of Gvili, an Israeli policeman. He was killed on October 7, 2023, while fighting to protect the Israeli community of Alumim near the Gaza border. He lived in a village in the central Negev, heard about the Hamas attack, and on his own initiative rushed to the nearby police station, armed himself, and drove to Alumim, where, despite being wounded shortly after his arrival, he fought the terrorists until he ran out of ammunition. He was captured and died of his wounds some days later in captivity.
Militarily speaking, skirmishes along the Yellow Line have continued daily.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad personnel constantly attempt to infiltrate into the Israeli-controlled area to scout, salvage weapons, or attack Israeli positions and patrols. A few Israeli soldiers have been wounded in the last month, and one who was severely wounded during such an incident a few months ago died from his wounds.
A few dozen Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad personnel have been killed or wounded. Most incidents are brief exchanges of stand-off fire across the Yellow Line. In one case, six Hamas personnel dug a shaft from an undiscovered tunnel adjacent to an Israeli position and wounded two Israeli soldiers before being killed by Israeli return of fire. Given the soft soil composition in the area, digging new tunnels or new shafts from existing tunnels is a fairly quick process. In another case, a rocket was launched from Hamas-controlled territory, but it failed and fell inside Gaza. Israeli troops respond to stand-off fire in kind and shoot at infiltrators. After major incidents, Israel retaliates by striking specific Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad commanders in Hamas-controlled territory.
Israeli forces continue to scour the territory in Israeli hands, and almost every day find new caches of weapons hidden in buildings or other sites, as well as new tunnel entrance shafts and tunnels. The weapons are collected, and the buildings and tunnels demolished.
Meanwhile, the flow of trucks carrying supplies into Gaza continues at approximately 800 per day, though a quarter of that is sufficient to meet the needs of the population. A large portion of these supplies continues to flow to Hamas itself. A video report by an anti-Hamas Palestinian showed a store of baby food that has been held back by Hamas rather than supplying it to the population. He claims the film was made during the period when Israel was falsely accused of deliberately starving Gaza’s population.
A report published by the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria did not go so far as that, but did state that Hamas controlled both the import and the dissemination of humanitarian assistance and used that control to fund itself at the population’s expense.
The wealth of supplies entering Gaza is enabling Hamas to continue to solidify its control over the population, enlist new troops, and build up its arsenal of weapons. Currently, this arsenal consists primarily of light weapons and explosives salvaged from destroyed storage sites and unexploded aerial bombs dropped by the Israelis during the war.
The number of small explosive devices that can be created from a salvaged bomb depends on its size, ranging from a dozen to several dozen. There are probably a few hundred such unexploded aerial bombs scattered throughout the area controlled by Hamas. In addition, the Israelis have intercepted quadcopters carrying weapons from Egypt into Gaza. How many of these have already managed to get through is not known. In the past, Hamas has also smuggled in weapons by sea, exploiting the natural current directions to float waterproof barrels from Egyptian Sinai to Gaza. Israeli naval patrols have intercepted some but not all of these barrels. Since the beginning of the war and the increased presence of Israeli naval patrols, naval smuggling has been more difficult for Hamas to accomplish, but it might still be happening.
In Phase 2 of the Ceasefire, Hamas is supposed to disarm, a technocratic government is to be established in Gaza, and an international force is meant to take over “peacekeeping,” enabling Israel to withdraw its forces closer to the border. Hamas continues to declare it will not disarm, and some of the mediators (Egypt, Qatar, and, according to a recent unverified report, the British government) are attempting to change this requirement. In theory, the technocratic government has been set up and is ready to begin work, but as long as Hamas remains armed, this government will be only a façade behind which Hamas will continue to control Gaza. This is especially true in view of the fact that most of the administrative personnel in this government previously worked for Hamas. This includes a 10,000-man armed police force that is meant to enforce the policies of the new government but that is actually manned almost entirely by Hamas personnel.
Furthermore, there is still no international force willing to replace the IDF in compelling Hamas’ disarmament. This could lead to a swift reigniting of the fighting.
Meanwhile, the IDF has completed preparations for at least one site on which to build a new tent/hut city for Gazans who will be transferred to live there, via security checkpoints to filter out Hamas personnel, and receive humanitarian support. More such sites are under discussion. If this works, it will reduce, possibly dramatically, the number of civilians living under Hamas authority. This would give the IDF a freer hand for operations against Hamas and the other organizations.
On the Israeli side of the border with Gaza, the rebuilding and return of the population forced to evacuate because of the October 2023 attack and subsequent war has continued, with most of the Israeli refugees now returned to their homes. In the town of Sderot, seven kilometers from the border, there has been a large-scale operation to build new neighborhoods. In addition to nearly all the original residents having returned, at least 3,000 new residents have moved to Sderot from other parts of Israel.
Dr. Eado Hecht, a senior research fellow at the BESA Center, is a military analyst focusing mainly on the relationship between military theory, military doctrine, and military practice. He teaches courses on military theory and military history at Bar-Ilan University, Haifa University, and Reichman University and in a variety of courses in the Israel Defense Forces. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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When ‘Bearing Witness’ Collides With Neutrality: Doctors Without Borders in Gaza
Trucks carrying humanitarian aid and fuel line up at the crossing into the Gaza Strip at the Rafah border on the Egypt side, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, in Rafah, Egypt, October 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Médecins Sans Frontière (MSF) — known in English as Doctors Without Borders — is a large humanitarian organization that provides medical assistance around the world.
While much of its work is with victims of natural disasters, disease outbreaks, and internally displaced people, one fourth of the group’s activity is helping people affected by armed conflict.
In order to do this work, MSF pledges neutrality and impartiality, as only on that basis can it demand that parties to conflicts allow it unimpeded access to help those in need.
But Israel is concerned that humanitarian non-profits are exploiting their Gaza access to shield militants and work against Israel politically.
Therefore, the Israeli government decided last March to require these organizations to provide detailed information about their activities and the identities of their employees, giving them a generous 10 months to comply. This information will enable Israel to make sure these organizations are exclusively humanitarian, and that their employees are not Hamas members or anti-Israel activists seeking to enter Gaza in disguise.
MSF loudly protested, claiming that revealing the identity of its employees to Israel would put them in danger, and that these requirements are really a cynical attempt by Israel to force MSF to abandon its mission.
But MSF has made numerous anti-Israel statements, on social media and on its website, which the Israel government has compiled in a report.
MSF has repeatedly claimed that Israel is guilty of ethnic cleansing, genocide, and systematic extermination. It has called for an arms embargo against Israel, while praising and supporting the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement. MSF also says that Israel is guilty of colonization, systemic oppression, and apartheid.
To be clear, the issue is not whether one agrees with these views (which are greatly disputed). The question is whether an organization that publicly accuses Israel of genocide, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing — and campaigns for boycotts and arms embargoes against it — can still claim to be neutral in any ordinary sense of the term.
MSF claims that this is the case. It says “Bearing Witness” is also one of its core values. It states that, “The principles of impartiality and neutrality are not synonymous with silence … we are duty-bound to raise our voices and speak out on behalf of our patients.”
In their view, as long as they provide medical care without discrimination and keep actual military combatants off their payroll, no amount of political action compromises their neutrality and the privileges it entails.
Of course, there is a vast chasm between the statements MSF and its employees are making and what “bearing witness” requires. MSF and its staff could describe the problems they face in fulfilling their medical mission, such as lack of supplies, equipment, and the like, without assigning blame or taking sides. Whether the tragic Gaza situation is the fault of Israel, Hamas, or others is a matter of opinion, which a neutral party should not voice.
Genocide is a legal determination that hinges on intent and military necessity, neither of which can be inferred from treating the wounded. When a humanitarian organization claims otherwise, it oversteps its bounds.
That is the position of the Red Cross, another humanitarian organization pledged to neutrality. The Red Cross does not make public accusations, specifically in order to maintain trust and keep the working relationships that enable it to fulfill its mission. And even though many in Israel believe the Red Cross should have pressed harder to visit the hostages, the Israeli government has made no effort to stop the Red Cross from operating in Gaza — and in fact, even cooperated with the Red Cross to facilitate hostage exchanges.
The MSF has become so critical of Israel that even former MSF Secretary General Alain Destexhe says the organization is now “biased, partial, and militant,” and accuses it of effectively siding with Hamas.
Israel has every right to tell MSF that the anti-Israel political campaign it tries to pass off as “bearing witness” is in direct conflict with its obligation to neutrality. If MSF wants to campaign against Israel, it has no right to expect Israel’s cooperation and help.
If Israel ultimately forces MSF to leave Gaza, MSF will likely portray this as proof that Israel is attempting to cut off humanitarian aid. But Israel has made clear through its continued cooperation with other neutral organizations that it welcomes bona fide humanitarian assistance. The predicament MSF now faces follows directly from its decision to mix humanitarian work with political campaigning. In doing so, MSF has put both its access to Gaza and its patients’ care at risk.
Shlomo Levin is the author of the Human Rights Haggadah, and he uses short fiction to explore human rights at https://shalzed.com/
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Trying to influence progressives in New Jersey, AIPAC may actually help one get elected
Politics has always been a dirty business – just ask King David, Socrates or Confucius. But AIPAC’s latest reckless move should raise even the most cynical of eyebrows.
It’s happening here in my home district, New Jersey’s 11th, which has had a vacant congressional seat since former congresswoman Mikie Sherrill became governor last month. The primary election is Thursday, and since this is a deep blue district, it’s almost certain that the Democratic nominee will go to Washington in a few months.
Not surprisingly, the field is crowded, but four front-runners have emerged: former congressman Tom Malinowski, who narrowly lost his seat in 2022 after his district was redrawn; Essex county commissioner Brendan Gill; former lieutenant governor Tahesha Way; and progressive Analilia Mejia, who has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and seemingly the entire left wing of the party.
In the last month, a group called the United Democracy Project has been attacking Malinowski from the left, alleging that he supports ICE. Factually, this is poppycock: Malinowski has vociferously spoken out against ICE’s excesses. But he did vote for an omnibus, bipartisan DHS funding bill in 2019, which included funding for ICE.
Unfair, perhaps, but also fair enough — this is politics as usual.
What’s unusual is that the “United Democracy Project” is actually a Super PAC affiliated with AIPAC, as reported in this publication a few weeks ago. Even more unusual is that AIPAC has poured over $2.2 million into this primary election, according to FEC data. And even more unusual than that is the fact that AIPAC, which has embraced Republicans and the Trump administration for their support of the Netanyahu government, is suddenly taking a progressive, anti-Trump line by targeting a candidate for supporting ICE.
Except, of course, that is all a shell game.
AIPAC isn’t running ICE ads because they care about immigrants; they’re attacking Malinowski for his temerity to defy AIPAC’s demand that aid to Israel be completely unconditional, which no other foreign aid ever is. A spokesman for “United Democracy Project” told Punchbowl News that the organization turned on Malinowski because “he talks about conditioning aid — that’s not a pro-Israel position, and he knows it.”
AIPAC also knows that, because of a quirk of congressional rules, Malinowski would become a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, because previous stints in Congress count for seniority purposes. And because, before serving in Congress, Malinowski was the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor under President Obama, he is widely respected as a foreign policy expert and would surely become a key member of the committee.
So, why is AIPAC making a target of a potential ally? Notice how the goalposts have shifted: Malinowski is not an anti-Zionist. He’s not even a critic of Israel, like Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who AIPAC spent $14 million to defeat in 2024. He espouses the same views as a majority of the American Jews: supportive of Israel as a Jewish state with a right to defend itself, but critical of the Netanyahu government’s actions in Gaza, which killed over 70,000 people. (The government recently accepted the Gaza/Hamas Health Ministry’s casualty numbers, after Israel’s right-wing supporters spent two years attacking journalists who cited them. No apologies for said attacks have been issued.)
On this issue, Malinowski is a centrist Democrat, not a progressive firebrand. Yet, Malinowski said at a recent event I attended in Montclair, AIPAC wants to make an example of him. Cross us, and we will come for you – no matter how moderate you are.
Rep. Ilhan Omar was excoriated for an offhand remark she made in 2019 that AIPAC’s power is “all about the Benjamins,” using a common slang term for hundred dollar bills. But AIPAC has dropped more than 22,000 Benjamins on one primary race to warn everyone not to cross them. Though she later apologized (under duress) for invoking antisemitic tropes about Jews and money, in terms of AIPAC’s political power, Omar was right.
Presumably, AIPAC is hoping that its efforts will turn voters away from Malinowski, who currently has a small lead, and toward Way or Gill, who, disappointingly, have declined to condemn the ads.
But if you’re paying attention to the NJ-11 race, you might suspect that their efforts will have an unintended effect: boosting Mejia, who, unlike Malinowski, is a strong critic of Israel in the familiar Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez/ZohranMamdani mode.
Think about it: Who benefits from AIPAC’s ads? Yes, Gill, like Malinowski, has spoken out against Trump and ICE – I saw him give an inspiring speech at a ‘No Kings’ rally a few months ago. But after a year of mainstream Democrats being perceived as ineffectual in their opposition to Trump, no one’s going to be motivated by an anti-ICE ad to vote for either of the Democratic machine’s candidates.
No, they’re going to vote for the strongest progressive in the race, and that is clearly Mejia, who is running in second place and has Rep. Ro Khanna visiting the district. (Khanna is fighting his own battle with AIPAC, which is spending to defeat him this year.) Along with Khanna, legions of Indivisible activists are doing Get Out The Vote work for Mejia. The wind is at her back, and AIPAC just gave her a squall.
To be sure, Mejia is not running on Israel, Gaza or support for Palestinians. She is following the successful progressive ‘affordability’ playbook, highlighting her support for a $15 minimum wage, free child care, Medicare for All and so on. Israel does not appear on her campaign website at all.
But she’s not hiding her views either. At a candidates forum last week, she affirmed that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, and pledged not to visit Israel on a trip sponsored by AIPAC. (No other candidate in this race took those positions.) And she has spent many years as a progressive activist expressing similar views.
The irony would be rich: AIPAC defeats a supporter of Israel, and puts another Squad member in the House instead. Talk about instant karma.
And then there’s the bigger picture. As everyone knows, the last two years have seen an unprecedented rise in antisemitism, along with conspiratorial thinking of all kinds – especially because, as we now see from the latest Epstein Files release, some of the conspiracies are real. And it’s at this moment that the leading organization of the “Israel Lobby” covertly tries to bait progressives into voting a certain way? Do they not see that this kind of secretive manipulation is exactly what the antisemites say about us?
Obviously, AIPAC is not responsible for antisemitism, and even if they played fair, bigotry would not go away. And again, politics is a dirty business. But did no one in the room even raise this as a concern? That it might be problematic for the Israel Lobby to hide its identity, lie to progressives (many of whom, of course, would be repulsed to learn that AIPAC is targeting them), and, under false pretenses, persuade them to vote for AIPAC’s agenda? Do they have no concern for how this conspiratorial chicanery might enflame antisemitic sentiments, or, God forbid, actions?
At this point, I can’t tell who I’m rooting for more: Malinowski, to show AIPAC that not every politician can be intimidated, or Mejia, to hand them a massive self-own. Either way, AIPAC would get what it deserves. I just hope no one else pays the price.
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