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Which side are you on: Jewish American or American Jew?
(JTA) — Earlier this month the New York Times convened what it called a “focus group of Jewish Americans.” I was struck briefly by that phrase — Jewish Americans — in part because the Times, like the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, tends to prefer “American Jews.”
It’s seemingly a distinction without a difference, although I know others might disagree. There is an argument that “American Jew” smacks of disloyalty, describing a Jew who happens to be American. “Jewish American,” according to this thinking, flips the script: an American who happens to be Jewish.
If pressed, I’d say I prefer “American Jew.” The noun “Jew” sounds, to my ear anyway, more direct and more assertive than the tentative adjective “Jewish.” It’s also consistent with the way JTA essentializes “Jew” in its coverage, as in British Jew, French Jew, LGBT Jew or Jew of color.
I wouldn’t have given further thought to the subject if not for a webinar last week given by Arnold Eisen, the chancellor emeritus at the Jewish Theological Seminary. In “Jewish-American, American-Jew: The Complexities and Joys of Living a Hyphenated Identity,” Eisen discussed how a debate over language is really about how Jews navigate between competing identities.
“What does the ‘American’ signify to us?” he asked. “What does the ‘Jewish’ signify and what is the nature of the relationship between the two? Is it a synthesis? Is it a tension, or a contradiction, or is it a blurring of the boundaries such that you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins?”
Questions like these, it turns out, have been asked since Jews and other immigrants first began flooding Ellis Island. Teddy Roosevelt complained in 1915 that “there is no room in this country for hyphenated Americans.” Woodrow Wilson liked to say that “any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of the Republic.” The two presidents were frankly freaked out about what we now call multiculturalism, convinced that America couldn’t survive a wave of immigrants with dual loyalties.
The two presidents lost the argument, and for much of the 20th century “hyphenated American” was shorthand for successful acculturation. While immigration hardliners continue to question the loyalty of minorities who claim more than one identity, and Donald Trump played with the politics of loyalty in remarks about Mexicans, Muslims and Jews, ethnic pride is as American as, well, St. Patrick’s Day. “I am the proud daughter of Indian immigrants,” former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said in announcing her run for the Republican presidential nomination this month.
For Jews, however, the hyphen became what philosophy professor Berel Lang called “a weighty symbol of the divided life of Diaspora Jewry.” Jewishness isn’t a distant country with quaint customs, but a religion and a portable identity that lives uneasily alongside your nationality. In a 2005 essay, Lang argued that on either side of the hyphen were “vying traditions or allegiances,” with the Jew constantly confronted with a choice between the American side, or assimilation, and the Jewish side, or remaining distinct.
Eisen calls this the “question of Jewish difference.” Eisen grew up in an observant Jewish family in Philadelphia, and understood from an early age that his family was different from their Vietnamese-, Italian-, Ukrainian- and African-American neighbors. On the other hand, they were all the same — that is, American — because they were all hyphenated. “Being parallel to all these other differences, gave me my place in the city and in the country,” he said.
In college he studied the Jewish heavy hitters who were less sanguine about the integration of American and Jewish identities. Eisen calls Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the renegade theologian at JTS, “the thinker who really made this question uppermost for American Jews.” Kaplan wrote in 1934 that Jewishness could only survive as a “subordinate civilization” in the United States, and that the “Jew in America will be first and foremost an American, and only secondarily a Jew.”
Kaplan’s prescription was a maximum effort on the part of Jews to “save the otherness of Jewish life” – not just through synagogue, but through a Jewish “civilization” expressed in social relationships, leisure activities and a traditional moral and ethical code.
Of course, Kaplan also understood that there was another way to protect Jewish distinctiveness: move to Israel.
A poster issued by the National Industrial Conservation Movement in 1917 warns that the American war effort might be harmed by a “hyphen of disloyalty,” suggesting immigrants with ties to their homelands were working to aid the enemy. (Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress)
The political scientist Charles Liebman, in “The Ambivalent American Jew” (1973), argued that Jews in the United States were torn between surviving as a distinct ethnic group and integrating into the larger society.
According to Eisen, Liebman believed that “Jews who make ‘Jewish’ the adjective and ‘American’ the noun tend to fall on the integration side of the hyphen. And Jews who make ‘Jew’ the noun and ‘American’ the adjective tend to fall on the survival side of the hyphen.”
Eisen, a professor of Jewish thought at JTS, noted that the challenge of the hyphen was felt by rabbis on opposite ends of the theological spectrum. He cited Eugene Borowitz, the influential Reform rabbi, who suggested in 1973 that Jews in the United States “are actually more Jewish on the inside than they pretend to be on the outside. In other words, we’re so worried about what Liebman called integration into America that we hide our distinctiveness.” Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, the leading Modern Orthodox thinker of his generation, despaired that the United States presented its Jews with an unresolvable conflict between the person of faith and the person of secular culture.
When I read the texts Eisen shared, I see 20th-century Jewish men who doubted Jews who could be fully at home in America and at home with themselves as Jews (let alone as Jews who weren’t straight or white — which would demand a few more hyphens). They couldn’t imagine a rich Jewishness that didn’t exist as a counterculture, the way Cynthia Ozick wondered what it would be like to “think as a Jew” in a non-Jewish language like English.
They couldn’t picture the hyphen as a plus sign, which pulled the words “Jewish” and “American” together.
Recent trends support the skeptics. Look at Judaism’s Conservative movement, whose rabbis are trained at JTS, and which has long tried to reconcile Jewish literacy and observance with the American mainstream. It’s shrinking, losing market share and followers both to Reform – where the American side of the hyphen is ascendant — and to Orthodoxy, where Jewish otherness is booming in places like Brooklyn and Lakewood, New Jersey. And the Jewish “nones” — those opting out of religion, synagogue and active engagement in Jewish institutions and affairs — are among the fastest-growing segments of American Jewish life.
Eisen appears more optimistic about a hyphenated Jewish identity, although he insists that it takes work to cultivate the Jewish side. “I don’t think there’s anything at stake necessarily on which side of the hyphen you put the Jewish on,” he said. “But if you don’t go out of your way to put added weight on the Jewish in the natural course of events, as Kaplan said correctly 100 years ago, the American will win.”
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The post Which side are you on: Jewish American or American Jew? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Chair of Britain’s largest arts center to step down amid antisemitism scrutiny
(JTA) — The chair of the United Kingdom’s largest arts institution will step down this fall following months of controversy over allegations of antisemitism and his social media activity related to Israel.
Misan Harriman, 48, the chair of the publicly funded Southbank Centre in central London that hosts millions of visitors per year, publicly stated earlier this week that he would not seek another term.
In a since-deleted social media post, Harriman stated on Monday that his departure had long been planned. “It’s semi-public knowledge that my term is coming to an end anyway,” he said, according to The Guardian. “I had decided way before this madness that I was going to do two terms.” He added, “I came on just after Covid, two terms, then handing the baton to whoever the next chairman will be. We will find out in due course, and of course, I am going to support that.”
The Southbank Centre said that it had been informed earlier in the year of Harriman’s decision.
In May, more than 64 MPs and peers wrote to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy asking the government to open an investigation into Harriman’s behavior, expressing concern that his public comments “have not been treated with sufficient scrutiny, particularly given their implications for public trust and community confidence,” in a publicly funded institution.
Nandy later confirmed that the Charity Commission and Arts Council England were examining complaints, alongside an internal review by the Southbank Centre.
Harriman, a photographer and self-described social activist, came to prominence in 2020, photographing a Black Lives Matter protest in London. He has overseen the Southbank Centre since 2021, but it’s only in recent months that he has faced increasing scrutiny over his public and social media comments, including referring to Israel as an “occupying power” and accusing the country of genocide.
In April, when two Jewish men were stabbed in the heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green in London, Harriman posted on social media about an alleged third victim who was Muslim. He wrote, “Wait, so there was a 3rd victim on the SAME DAY who was Muslim?! And our press isn’t reporting it? Even the Met Police didn’t mention the Muslim victim in its X post?! What is going on @metpolice_uk ?”
The Muslim victim did in fact receive coverage, and the focus on the Jewish victims stemmed from the alleged attacker’s anti-Jewish animus.
Then, following Reform UK’s gains in the May 7 local elections, Harriman shared a post that critics said compared the party’s success to the events that led to the Holocaust.
The post prompted Reform MP Robert Jenrick to respond on X, “Comparing the millions who voted Reform on Thursday to the Nazis is disgusting.”
Harriman received support from many prominent activists and artists who signed a petition in May organized by The Good Law Project. The petition accused right-wing media of running a smear campaign against Harriman.
Those who signed included activist Greta Thunberg, actors Aimee Lou Wood, Mark Ruffalo, and Susan Sarandon, director Yorgos Lanthimos and journalist Mehdi Hassan.
Following Harriman’s announcement, the Campaign Against Antisemitism praised the decision, posting on X, “Mr Harriman’s decision to step down – supposedly always his intention – is welcome. This saga has exposed a rot in the arts world. We hope that his successor will be more worthy of the post.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Chair of Britain’s largest arts center to step down amid antisemitism scrutiny appeared first on The Forward.
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Mamdani touts ‘Babies not Bombs’ messaging after flexing political muscle in the New York primaries
(New York Jewish Week) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani celebrated the victories of the progressive candidates he endorsed in New York’s Democratic primaries describing their success as a “shift in the balance of power.”
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, the morning after the primaries, Mamdani touted the triumphs as a shift in the balance of power between “working people” and “special interests.”
Mamdani-endorsed candidates Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez won Democratic nominations for Congress. During the press conference, the mayor repeatedly highlighted their calls to restrict U.S. military aid to Israel and redirect federal funding to domestic priorities.
Following Mamdani’s election night sweep in New York, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that “America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!!”
The victories offered an early demonstration of Mamdani’s political influence beyond City Hall, as several Democratic Socialist candidates he backed, including Chevalier, defeated established Democratic incumbents in their districts.
“The working person is struggling in our city to afford basic needs,” Mamdani said, adding that Avila Chevalier’s oft-repeated slogan of investing in “Babies not Bombs,” is “the kind of conscience, the kind of clarity, the kind of conviction that has been missing in our politics for far too long.”
Mamdani responded to the president’s post on Wednesday, telling a reporter who asked whether his goal is to make America a “socialist” country that his “goal is to make America a place that every American can afford.”
When asked about federal policies that could be affected by Mamdani’s endorsed candidates, the mayor cited Valdez’s support for “foreign policy that understands human rights for all” and Lander’s commitment to co-sponsoring the Block the Bombs Act, which prohibits the sale of certain U.S.-made offensive weapons to Israel.
Mamdani also dismissed a question about whether he was concerned about how the victories would play out in November as Democrats try to win back the House.
“Every time the fight for working people takes a step forward, you will hear Republicans say that this is actually going to jeopardize the existence of that very fight,” he said.
When asked whether the election of Chevalier, who has faced scrutiny for past social media posts attacking Democrats and her appearance at an Oct. 8, 2023, pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square, could “complicate campaigns for Democrats as a whole,” Mamdani replied “No.”
“[Chevalier] often speaks about a politics of life. She speaks about ‘Babies not bombs,’” Mamdani continued. “What could be a better example of what the people of the district want to see versus what the people of the district have been forced to experience, which is tens of billions of dollars being spent at a national level to bomb children overseas, while children in our own districts are struggling.”
The post Mamdani touts ‘Babies not Bombs’ messaging after flexing political muscle in the New York primaries appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish anti-Zionist David Orkin defeats incumbent in NY Assembly primary
(New York Jewish Week) — David Orkin, a Jewish anti-Zionist attorney and democratic socialist, defeated incumbent New York State Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. Orkin won State Assembly District 38, which includes parts of Queens.
Orkin, an immigrant workers’ rights attorney and union organizer, received 58.8% of the vote, while Rajkumar, who has represented the district since 2021 and is the first South Asian woman ever elected to office in the state, received 40.9%. The district covers a swath of Queens, including parts of Ridgewood, Glendale, Ozone Park, Woodhaven and Richmond Hill.
“Pro-Palestine candidates are sweeping in NYC tonight,” Jewish Voice for Peace Action wrote in a post on Instagram celebrating Orkin’s win Tuesday. “Palestine was on the ballot — and won. David will be a champion for Palestinian freedom in Albany.”
The post from JVP Action echoed a message Orkin had highlighted throughout his campaign.
“It’s so incredibly meaningful to me to be running this race as an anti-Zionist Jew, to be one of the few anti-Zionist Jewish voices that is in an elected seat in the state government,” Orkin said in an Instagram reel posted by Jewish Voice for Peace Action earlier this month.
He added that, if elected, he would be able to go in front of the state legislature and assert that “criticizing Israel for genocide, demanding an end to the occupation, demanding an end to funding war abroad is not antisemitic.”
Orkin’s victory came amid a strong night for democratic socialist candidates across New York City, including left-wing congressional candidates Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, who also defeated establishment-backed opponents in their primaries.
While Orkin was not endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose winning endorsements of Lander, Chevalier and Valdez signaled a pro-Palestinian lurch for the party in the city with the world’s largest Jewish population outside of Israel. Nonetheless, his victory elevated a self-described anti-Zionist to the ranks of New York’s elected officials at a time when debates over Israel have become increasingly prominent within Democratic politics.
While Israel-related issues were not listed on Orkin’s platform, which centered on affordability and immigration, he repeatedly expressed his support for a “free Palestine” and attacked Rajkumar’s record of support for the Jewish state during his campaign.
“In the past several years my opponent AM Rajkumar has walked in the Israel day parade but has said NOTHING against the war in Gaza, occupation of Palestine, or Islamophobic attacks faced by the people of New York,” Orkin wrote in a May post on X.
Rajkumar, who was a close political ally of former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, in her campaign platform vowed to combat antisemitism.
After establishing a Jewish Voice for Peace chapter in Tucson, Arizona, in 2014, Orkin remained involved in pro-Palestinian activism as a member of the anti-Zionist activist group.
“I’ve been involved in the Jewish Palestine Solidarity Movement for 12, 13 years,” Orkin told Democratic Left last month. “I’ve dedicated part [of my] life to making sure that Jewish people are creating religious spaces outside of Zionism, and to making more space for Palestinian organizing to have an impact.”
On the campaign trail, Orkin received a host of endorsements from prominent progressive groups and lawmakers, including Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, JVP Action and NYC Democratic Socialists for America.
Rajkumar was endorsed by ActJew, the new nonprofit focused on combatting antisemitism, as well as the Queens Jewish Alliance and Assemblymembers Sam Berger, Kalman Yeger and Chuck Lavine.
Orkin received over $290,000 in campaign contributions for the election cycle, including over $156,000 from the office of the state comptroller, while Rajkumar received over $270,000, including $9,000 from health care executive Daniel Lowy.
“I have dedicated my life fighting for immigrants and workers, I am proud to have earned their support in this election, and I look forward to spending the rest of my life winning the beautiful and joyous lives we deserve,” Orkin said in a statement, according to QNS.
The post Jewish anti-Zionist David Orkin defeats incumbent in NY Assembly primary appeared first on The Forward.
