Uncategorized
A scholar sees a common root for antisemitism and racism: ‘Christian supremacy’
(JTA) — Magda Teter’s new book, “Christian Supremacy,” begins in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 11, 2017. Hundreds of white nationalist neo-Nazis who ostensibly gathered to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from a local park broke into a chant: “Jews will not replace us.”
Other writers and scholars would note how antisemitism shaped white nationalism. But Teter, professor of history and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University, saw something else: how centuries of Christian thought and practice fed the twin evils of antisemitism and racism.
“The ideology espoused by white supremacists in the US and in Europe is rooted in Christian ideas of social and religious hierarchy,” she writes. “These ideas developed, gradually, first in the Mediterranean and Europe in respect to Jews and then in respect to people of color in European colonies and in the US, before returning transformed back to Europe.”
In the book, subtitled “Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism,” she traces this idea from the writings of the early church fathers like Paul the Apostle, though centuries of Catholic and Protestant debates over the status of Jews in Europe, to the hardening of racist attitudes with the rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Antisemitic laws and theology, she argues, developed within Christianity a “mental habit” of exclusion and dominance that would eventually be applied to people of color up to and including modern times.
Teter is careful to acknowledge the different forms antisemitism and racism have taken, distinguishing between the Jews’ experience of social and legal exclusion and near annihilation, and the enslavement, displacement and ongoing persecution of Black people. And yet, she writes, “that story began with Christianity’s theological relation with Jews and Judaism.”
Teter is previously the author of “Blood Libel: On The Trail of an Antisemitic Myth,” winner of the 2020 National Jewish Book Award. At Fordham, the Catholic university in the Bronx, she is helping assemble what may be the largest repository of artifacts and literature dedicated to the Jewish history of the borough.
We spoke Thursday about how groups like the Proud Boys embrace centuries-old notions of Christian superiority, how “whiteness” became a thing and how she, as a non-Jew raised in Poland, became a Jewish studies scholar.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Your book was conceived and written during the COVID lockdown. Where did the idea for the book come from?
It’s an accidental project. I’ve been teaching the history of antisemitism for years, and I live in Harlem so questions of race and racism are very stark in my daily life. And since I grew up in Poland, and American history was not something we were taught or studied, I’ve never been satisfied with the various explanations for the strength of antisemitism and history of racism. And as I mentioned in my prologue, I watched the Raoul Peck documentary, “I Am Not Your Negro,” which has a clip with James Baldwin saying that white people have to figure out why they invented the idea of the N-word and must “embrace this stranger that they have maligned so long.” You could also say that the European Christians created the idea of “the Jew” and that sort of caricature had absolutely nothing to do with flesh and blood Jews. I kept noticing these parallels, as an outsider, reading American and African-American history.
I was also thinking about this idea of servitude that was attached to Jews in Christian theology, and then in law.
You write in your book that “Over time, white European Christians branded both Jews and people of color with ‘badges of servitude’ and inferiority.” What do you mean by servitude in this context?
In Christian theology, from the earliest Christian texts, the idea of servitude and slavery is attached to the concept of Jews and Judaism. Paul does it in his Epistles. He uses this quote from the book of Genesis that “the elder shall serve the younger,” which becomes really embedded in Christian theology. It is the Jews, the elder people, who should serve the Christians, the younger people. Later on in medieval theology and canon law, Jews are in a servile position, consigned for their sin of rejecting Jesus to perpetual servitude. So even though Jews were free people and could live mostly where they wanted to live, marry whoever they wanted to marry — nobody was sold and some even had slaves — that idea of Jews as confined to perpetual servitude to Christians created a habit of thinking of Jews as having an inferior social status.
That language became secularized in modern times, and we see the development of the [antisemitic] trope of Jewish power: that they are in places where they shouldn’t be. I worked on fleshing out the parallels between the idea and then legal status of Jewish servitude and the conceptual perception of Black people in servile and inferior positions.
Magda Teter’s new book explores how “white European Christians branded both Jews and people of color with ‘badges of servitude’ and inferiority.” (Chuck Fishman)
What other kinds of parallels did you find between racism and antisemitism?
In the Christian theology, Black people, like Jews, will be seen as cursed by God. Jews were [portrayed as] lazy because they didn’t work physically — they made money and exploited Christians. Black people were [portrayed as] lazy because they were trying to avoid physical labor at the expense of white men. Both people were seen as carnal, both as sexually dangerous, and so on.
I was struck by the fact that the racist turn of Christian supremacy — justifying the enslavement of Black people on theological grounds — is a fairly late development, taking hold in the early modern period when Europeans established slaveholding empires.
That’s right. In the summer of 2020, the summer of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, we were all thinking about these issues of race and racism and America. And as I was in the middle of writing the article that became the book, I felt that there was a deeper history that needed to be told, and that slavery is not bound by color until the enslavement of Black Africans by Europeans during the colonial expansion of Europe.
After the French Revolution, when Jews were offered “emancipation” in much of Europe, there were deep debates about whether they could be citizens and be entitled to the same rights and protections as Christian citizens of France and England and other countries. How was that debate informed by Christianity?
In pre-modern Europe, there was obviously both a religious and legal framework under which Jews existed. They had their place in a social hierarchy. After the French Revolution, people are creating a new political reality. The idea of equality obviously challenged the social hierarchies that existed, including the idea that Christians were the superior religion. And that begins to play a role on two levels. One is the level of, well, “how can you be equal and be our judges and make decisions about us?” It’s fear of power — political power and political equality. That challenges the habit of thinking that sees Jews as inferior, in servitude and otherwise insolent and arrogant.
The other level comes from Enlightenment scholars who begin to place Jews in the Middle East and in the Holy Land, in Palestine. Jews are no longer seen as European. They are seen as “Oriental,” and they are compared to the non-European religions and practices that these Enlightenment scholars have been studying. Their differences are now also racialized. “They are not like us, they can’t assimilate. They can never be Frenchmen, they can never be Germans.”
And I guess it’s a short step from that to regarding people with dark skin as inferior and subordinate.
That’s right. Enlightenment scholars are also trying to to understand why it is justified to enslave Black Africans and they do it through “scientific” and other means. They classify Africans as inferior intellectually and they create this idea of race.
I began to think about these European politicians and intellectuals in terms of creating their identities, and what I ended up arguing is what we saw in Charlottesville, what we’re seeing in Europe. It’s not necessarily just about hate, but it’s about exclusion and rejection of Jews and people of color from equality, from citizenship.
And the common thread here is that whiteness and Christianity become inseparable. You write that “freedom and liberty now came to be linked not only to Christianity, but to whiteness, and servitude and enslavement to blackness.”
That’s right. White Christian “liberty” becomes embedded and embodied in law.
Did you see any pitfalls in drawing parallels between the Black and Jewish experiences? I am thinking of those in either community who might say, “How dare you compare our suffering to theirs!”
Yes, I was tempered. I think what some call “comparative victimhood” has paralyzed conversations about this subject, and I kept it in my mind all the time. What I hope comes through is that there’s incredible value in a comparative approach. Coming from Jewish studies as my primary field, the comparison with the Black experience gave me clarity on the nature of antisemitism as well as on the nature of the Jewish experience, and vice versa: The Jewish experience can also give clarity to some of the aspects of anti-Black racism.
What’s an example?
So, for instance, questions like, “Are Jews white? Are they not white? When did they become white?” That’s a whole genre of scholarship. And when you look at it through the lens of law and ideology, you begin to see that from a legal perspective, Jews were considered white in the United States because they could immigrate and they could be naturalized according to law. They did not have to go to court to become American. Their rights to vote were not challenged. There was discrimination, they couldn’t stay in hotels and in some places they couldn’t find employment, but by law, they were considered citizens. The debate about the whiteness of Jews is creating a fog of misunderstanding.
Black Americans were targeted by specific legal statutes from the very beginning in the Constitution and then in naturalization law and so on. And then there was the backlash even after the Civil War to the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments [aimed at establishing political equality for Americans of all races].
Statues at the Strasbourg Cathedral depict Ecclesia and Synagoga, representing the triumph of the church, at left, and the servitude of Judaism, which is represented by a blindfolded figure, drooping and carrying a broken lance. (Edelseider/Wikimedia Commons)
How much do modern-day white supremacists, like the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys, see themselves as Christian? Or is this a kind of white supremacy that doesn’t name itself Christian but doesn’t even realize how many of its ideas are based in theology?
I think they might not be conscious of this legacy, but neo-Nazis take from the legacy of the Nazis who themselves were not thinking of themselves as Christian necessarily. But what I argue in the book is that white Christian supremacy becomes white supremacy. It never discards the Christian sense of domination and superiority that emerges from its early relationship with Jews and Judaism.
In the United States, Black people serve as contrast figures to whiteness, in the law and in the culture. You cannot have whiteness without Blackness. For Christians, Jews serve as that contrast figure. Consciously or unconsciously, the Proud Boys are embracing that. They talk of “God-given” freedoms for white people. That is the Christian legacy.
You said that the Nazis didn’t necessarily see themselves as a Christian movement. But I must ask, even though it is not the scope of your book, was the Holocaust a culmination of white Christian supremacy? Because I think many Christian theologians would want to say that Nazism was godless, and a perversion of the true faith.
I’ll say that when exclusionary ideology is coupled with the power of the state, that’s where it can lead.
In the years since the Holocaust especially, there have been many efforts by Christian leaders to address the ideological failings of the past. You write about Nostra Aetate, the 1965 declaration by the Catholic Church absolving Jews of collective guilt in the death of Jesus and some Protestant documents of contrition. But I got the feeling you were disappointed that many denominations haven’t gone far enough in reckoning with the past.
There was a sort of a moral sense that something needs to be addressed after the Holocaust. But then it is not fully addressed. I don’t think anybody has addressed the issue of power — the roots of hate, yes, but not the dynamics of power. We’ll see where the book goes, but maybe theologians will begin to grapple with this legacy of superiority and domination, and the way hierarchical habits of thinking have been developed through theology and through religious culture.
What other impact do you hope the book may have?
White supremacy is very much in the air. We need to speak up against it, and make connections and allyships. I hope that maybe because the book deals with law and power, it may create bridges among people who care about “We the People” as a vision of people who are diverse, respectful and equal, and not the exclusionary vision offered by white and Christian supremacy.
A cross burns at a Ku Klux Klan rally on Aug. 8, 1925. (National Photo Company Collection)
I’d love to talk about your background. You’re not Jewish but you are chair of Jewish Studies at Fordham, a Catholic university. What drew you to the study of Judaism and the Jews?
I grew up in Poland with a father who from the time I was a little girl would point out to me that there had been Jews in Poland. We would drive through the countryside, and he’d say, “This used to be a Jewish town and there used to be a synagogue and there was the Jewish cemetery.” I grew up being very conscious of the past’s presence and this kind of stark absence of Jews in Poland, where in the 1970s when I grew up Jewish history was taboo.
As soon as Jewish books on Jewish subjects began to be published, including those that dealt with antisemitism, we would read it together. We would talk about it. He wouldn’t just shift the destruction and murder of Jews in Poland on to the Nazis.
There was no Jewish studies program in Poland when I was applying to universities, so I studied Hebrew in Israel, and then studied Yiddish in New York at YIVO. I came to Columbia University to get my PhD in Jewish history and my career went in the direction it did. I was a professor of history and director of the Jewish and Israel studies program at Wesleyan University. I came to Fordham eight years ago and created a program in Jewish studies.
Your previous book was about the blood libel, the historic canard that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood. This one’s about antisemitism. I don’t want to presume, but is your interest in these subjects in any way an act of contrition?
I grew up in a very secular household. I did not grow up Catholic. But I think growing up in Poland made me very, very aware of antisemitism and the history of antisemitism. I got my PhD from Columbia University in Jewish history, which did not emphasize Jewish suffering, but Jewish life, and I have studied Jewish life and teach about Jewish life — not just about Jewish suffering.
However, in the last few years, antisemitism has certainly been on the minds of many of us. I also am committed to the idea of shared history, and therefore all my scholarship, as much as it is about Jews, it is also about the church and Poland and the law. Jews are an integral part of that history and culture. And, as such, I’m committed to that, to teaching about the vibrancy of Jewish life as much as the dynamics of what made that life difficult over the centuries.
—
The post A scholar sees a common root for antisemitism and racism: ‘Christian supremacy’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
‘Spatial restructuring’ razes hundreds of residences in West Bank refugee camps
The Israel Defense Forces refers to the systematic demolition of hundreds of homes in the Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams refugee camps as “spatial restructuring,” a bureaucratic euphemism for operations designed to create maneuvering space. For years, Israel has used house demolitions in the West Bank as a punitive measure against terrorists, but over the past 18 months, the purpose behind the policy has changed: Israel is now razing homes in order to widen roads inside the camps, which will allow for the easier passage of military vehicles.
The destruction is part of a trend whereby Israel is importing combat tactics it has used in the wars in Gaza and Lebanon to the occupied West Bank. The main difference is the Israeli settlers — who engaged in persistent efforts to expel Palestinian populations first from Israeli-administered areas of the West Bank, and now from zones under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
In the aftermath of Oct. 7, the IDF distributed thousands of firearms to the settlers, some of whom were recruited as “regional defense soldiers.” As a result, IDF weapons have been used in many of the violent clashes between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank. Last month, N12 News reported that the IDF will scale back the number of regional defense soldiers — and that Shin Bet will vet the recruits.
But even without the settlers — looking solely from the perspective of the IDF’s military activity — a significant change is underway. From the IDF’s perspective, the West Bank is turning from a place that is home to millions of Palestinians who are not involved in any hostile activity, into a combat zone. And combat zones can be “restructured” according to the military’s needs, even if that includes the demolition of entire neighborhoods or population transfer.
According to the IDF, the change was actually sparked by the Palestinian side. Even before Oct. 7 2023, the army claims, Palestinian terrorist organizations were setting up battalions — larger fighting units that held training exercises and activities based on an organized military doctrine. In July 2023, the IDF responded by launching Operation Home and Garden in the Jenin refugee camp — the largest Israeli military operation since Defensive Shield in 2002. It was a short, targeted maneuver that lasted just two days.
In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 massacre, the IDF described an uptick in the activity of these battalions, which led, in August 2024, to Operation Summer Camps, during which the army entered the refugee camps in Tulkarm and killed the commander of a local battalion. The same month, as Israel Hayom reporter Amir Ettinger revealed, Israel Katz — then minister of foreign affairs and now minister of defense — made the IDF’s intentions quite clear: “The refugee camps are the root of the evil,” he said during a closed-door meeting with leaders of the Yesha Council. “They are not controlled by the Palestinian Authority, but by Iran. The Jenin refugee camp must be cleared of its residents and dealt with the same way we dealt with the Gaza Strip.”
In January 2025, Katz’s words became reality when the IDF launched Operation Iron Wall. According to figures issued by the military, 208 homes were destroyed in the Jenin refugee camp and 234 in the Tulkarm and Nur Shams camps. The goal was to allow armored Israeli vehicles to move within the camp. Satellite images leave no room for doubt as to the extent of the devastation.
The IDF currently has troops stationed permanently inside the refugee camps and is not allowing the tens of thousands of residents who left to return to their homes. Some Palestinians who were expelled have petitioned to Israel’s High Court of Justice, via the Association of Civil Rights in Israel and attorneys Hila Sharon and Reut Shaer. In February, the IDF told the court that it “does not intend to maintain a permanent presence in the refugee camps and, once the goals of the operation have been fully achieved, the current operation in the camps will be ended.” At the same time, the IDF added that “the necessary operational conditions have not yet been fully met.”
“We are a household of six people, including four children,” says Bassem — not his real name — who lived on the outskirts of the Tulkarm refugee camp and who was expelled around a year ago. “They gave us 10 minutes to leave. And that was that. Since then, we haven’t been home.”
According to Bassem, despite the IDF’s claim that it issues individual permits for residents to visit their homes, his request has been denied. He did manage to get access to the home one time — without permission — in the early hours of the morning. “All of the furniture was broken. The doors were open, there were cats and dogs inside, the trees in the yard had no fruit. Everything was dead. And I regret going to see it. I don’t have any security charges against me and I have committed no crime. Why would they do that to my home? And even if they do give me a permit — there’s no furniture left.”
Bassem and his family now live in rented accommodation. The financial assistance they got earlier is dwindling and he cannot see any kind of future. “UNRWA gave us some money at the start and a few cartons of oil, rice and things like that. Now, 80% of the aid has ended. In my opinion, there’s not even a 1% chance we’ll ever get back to our home.”
Delivering a message
“Spatial restructuring” is not a new concept, but, in the West Bank, its meaning has changed. In the past, it mainly referred to roadblocks designed to control the movement of Palestinian and Israeli vehicles and to allow the Israeli authorities to impose a military closure at will. In the past year it has taken on a new significance: the destruction of Palestinian homes and infrastructure.
For example, in August last year, Maj.-Gen. Avi Bluth, the head of the Central Command, ordered the uprooting of thousands of Palestinian olive trees from an area of about 300 dunams (74 acres) belonging to the village of Al-Mughayyir, following a shooting attack in which a Jewish Israeli was lightly wounded. “Every village and every enemy must know that if they carry out an attack against the [Israeli] residents, they will pay a heavy price. They will experience a curfew, they will experience a siege, and they will experience restructuring operations,” Bluth said. “We are now bearing down on this village, which has been responsible for quite a few attacks lately. We will also deliver this message to the village.”
Similar measures were also taken after the terror attack in May 2025 in which 30-year-old Tzeela Gez was shot dead while on her way to the maternity hospital to give birth. The IDF demolished homes in the adjacent village of Burkin overlooking Route 446 — including a four-story apartment block.
Another indication of the change in the IDF’s approach is the increase in the number of Palestinian fatalities in the West Bank since Oct. 7. According to data released by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, 478 and 474 Palestinians were killed by IDF fire in 2023 and 2024 respectively. In 2025, that figure dropped to 221. These have been by far the most deadly years for Palestinians in the West Bank since the early 2000s, at the height of the second intifada. Figures issued by the IDF’s Central Command show a similar trend.
One of the reasons for this increase is the order issued by Bluth — which was revealed last year by Haaretz — that expanded open-fire orders in the West Bank. Here, too, the IDF is importing its operating tactics from the Gaza Strip. The instructions appear to reflect a broader change in the IDF’s combat doctrine, possibly influenced by the fact that many of its soldiers also fought in Gaza.
“A lot of things have changed,” says Meir — not his real name — an officer in the reserves who served for many months in the West Bank before and after Oct. 7. “I’m not sure whether this is something imported from another region, or rather that the security reality has simply changed. Once October 7 happened, it was understood that we can no longer just take it. So, we’re beefing up security: adding posts, bringing back patrols — every patrol that was ever cut has been brought back and every patrol that never existed before has been added.”
Meir claims that the rules of engagement have not been changed and insists that “no one is firing indiscriminately.” At the same time, he adds: “It’s true that there was an understanding that we have to respond more forcefully. Before October 7, people were less eager to use firearms; afterwards, the IDF suddenly remembered that you can’t fight terrorism with the foul odor of tear gas. We are given weapons so that we can use them. When there was a need — we used them. There was a long period of time when we were afraid to shoot, when even shooting in the air would mean that all hell broke loose. You shoot your gun — that’s what it’s for. We don’t walk around with our weapons slung over our shoulders just because it looks good.”
Meir also believes that the change is primarily a response to Palestinian terror. “The Palestinians responded very strongly to October 7. There were Hamas flags, rallies — even violence. It was something out of the ordinary. So, we used the means at our disposal to quiet it down. The Palestinians did things we hadn’t seen before — three armed men tried to infiltrate Adora [a settlement northwest of Hebron], for example, and there were bomb-making factories. We found crazy amounts of terrorist infrastructure.”
‘There’s a problem here. We’ll pay the price’
Maj.-Gen. (Res.) Gadi Shamni, a former Central Command chief, sees things differently. “It’s all a question of proportionality,” he tells Shomrim. “There has been a significant increase in the threat level — a lot of underbelly IEDs and all of that organization [of Palestinian battalions]. That said, October 7 and everything that’s happened since, along with the footage coming out of Gaza, ultimately mean that in a lot of places [the IDF] is sometimes using a ton of force — more than is always necessary. There are some sensitivities which, in the past, [the IDF] treated very seriously. Today, those sensitivities have disappeared — and that’s not a good thing.”
“I have spoken to soldiers and officers, young and old, who used to see things very differently,” Shamni adds. “Today, what they say is: ‘Take no chances — shoot at everything.’ This is a problematic approach and the IDF, at some stage, will have to take control of the situation — because we will end up paying a price. Once, officers dealt with these sensitivities, they briefed their soldiers on how to treat civilians, how to behave in sensitive areas. Today, the lower-ranking soldiers are unaware of any of this, because nobody talks to them. Everything is black or white. There’s no middle ground. And that’s a problem when you’re operating in a civilian environment.”
“[The principle of] proportionality has vanished,” he adds. “When you talk about proportionality, you are told, ‘Now’s the time to kick ass.’ There is also intense pressure from the settlements, the government, from [ministers] Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Ultimately, the IDF carries out the government’s policies. You can see what Smotrich is doing on the ground and it is incumbent on the IDF to execute those policies. We have a problem here.”
IDF: Freedom of action remains a necessary condition for regional security
The IDF submitted the following response: “The intensive efforts of the IDF to thwart terrorism in Judea and Samaria began before the outbreak of the war. Terrorist infrastructure developed in the refugee camps of the northern Samaria region, from which attacks were launched. In light of this, the IDF launched Operation Iron Wall in January 2025, during which operational and engineering activities were carried out to enable freedom of action for security forces, dismantle terrorist infrastructure and prevent terrorist organizations from establishing a presence.
“In addition to these operational activities, there has been a decrease of about 80% in the volume of terror attacks in northern Samaria recently. Most of the measures implemented during the operation, including the clearing of access routes and other engineering work, were also reviewed by the Supreme Court in response to petitions that were subsequently dismissed following the submission of a formal response and a hearing attended by all parties.
“Vegetation clearing is carried out according to established protocols, with the approval of relevant authorities in Central Command and based on operational requirements. These measures are designed to ensure the safety of road users, protect travel routes and prevent infiltrations and terrorist attacks. Every operation is preceded by a professional assessment. The IDF operates in accordance with the law and its decisions are subject to judicial review. Security forces act against structures built without authorization, prioritizing enforcement against illegal construction near roads that poses a security risk. Such enforcement actions are carried out under the planning and building laws applicable in the region.
“IDF forces continue to operate throughout Judea and Samaria, focusing on targeted counterterrorism efforts to ensure the safety of citizens. The freedom of action maintained by the IDF in terrorist hubs across northern Samaria remains a necessary condition for regional security.”
The post ‘Spatial restructuring’ razes hundreds of residences in West Bank refugee camps appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Whether it’s viral dot cakes or Love Shack Fancy skirts, Chloe Hechter wants you to know that “Jewish-American Princesses did it first”
On the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Butterfield Market currently boasts hour-long lines for the viral “dot cakes,” which are entirely covered by tiny sprinkles. For influencer Chloe Hechter, however, these cakes are nothing new — she saw them at every college bed party, birthday and Bat Mitzvah she ever went to.
“Jewish-American Princesses did it first,” she claimed in a recent Tiktok.
Hechter, who is 25, regularly receives thousands of likes on her content which is centered around relatable modern Jewish experiences: summer relationships at Jewish summer camp, drama within Jewish sororities, coming home from college for Passover seder. She’s described her mission as reclaiming the “Jewish-American Princess” stereotype, which often brings to mind a girl who is spoiled, materialistic and boy-obsessed. Hechter hopes to present a different narrative.
“Jewish American Princess means a headstrong, confident Jewish woman who knows what she’s worth,” Hechter wrote in a February Substack post. “A girl who knows her place in the world as a woman and as a Jew, and who isn’t afraid to be exactly who she is in those spaces.”
The modern-day stereotype of a “Jewish-American Princess” is known for a dress code of sweat sets from Free City or Aviator Nation, Roller Rabbit pajamas and ruffly skirts from Love Shack Fancy. Before that, as Jamie Lauren Keiles discussed in a 2018 Vox article, the “JAP” uniform included Juicy tracksuits in the 2000s, Calvin Klein jeans in the ‘80s and cashmere sweaters in the ‘50s. But, as the ‘princess’ moniker suggests, these looks have always come at a price (Free City sweatpants currently retail for $168).
Keiles explains that JAPs’ historic reputation for dependence on “daddy’s money” stems from Jewish men in the 1950s, still seen by many as nouveau riche, who sought someone to blame. The Jewish-American Princess was encapsulated, Keiles writes, in Goodbye, Columbus’ Brenda Patimkin, who, though educated and beautiful, is also characterized as vain, demanding and uncompromising. It is this kind of portrayal that Hechter hopes to challenge. Though she acknowledges her own privileged background, she also argues that privilege doesn’t necessarily mean out-of-touch.
Hechter’s upbringing was “a gift I’ve been given,” she said. Although she didn’t discuss her background in detail, Hechter expressed her admiration for her parents, who run their own businesses and worked hard to make sure that she grew up in comfort. As opposed to the stereotypical Jewish-American princess, searching for a wealthy husband to provide for her, Hechter said that she uses her background as motivation to be self-sufficient — and as inspiration for her content.
Hechter started out as a child actor, and later went to high school at LaGuardia, the famed performing arts school in New York. At heart, though, she says she was also a writer. Even from a young age, she told me, she would write down funny or ridiculous situations she observed. For a Reform Jewish girl going to New York City private school, there was a lot of material — particularly during B’nei Mitzvah season.
“I’d be like ‘why am I in a party bus to a country club?,’” she joked.
For Hechter, Jewish experiences like these — along with her summers at sleepaway camp — were primarily cultural as opposed to religious. She observed the major holidays, but didn’t go to services regularly; she found the teachings of the Torah interesting but didn’t follow them to the letter.
After she graduated from Syracuse, Hechter began posting skits, which eventually began to go viral. Her first big video, currently at over 660,000 likes, was themed around getting ready for a camp social. In an interview with her college newspaper, she joked that she “would’ve put on makeup” if she had anticipated the video’s success.
Inspired that social media could be her calling, Hechter initially pushed herself to post five times a day, a pace that now seems inconceivable to her. It paid off, though; Hechter currently boasts over 186,000 followers on TikTok and 79,000 on Instagram.
In her videos, Hechter is dedicated to representing a version of her Jewish experience that is rarely shown on screen. Most Jewish characters in film, she says, tend to follow a limited set of archetypes: they’re deeply religious, there’s a depressing undertone or, like Shoshanna Shapiro from Girls, their religion isn’t discussed. When a funny, secular Jew appears on screen, he’s almost always a man.
“I love Adam Sandler and Larry David as much as the next girl, but I wish growing up that I had a cool, fun Jewish girl to look up to,” Hechter said.
Hechter explained that many of her skits draw from experiences she observed on the outskirts; as she tells it, she went to camp but wasn’t the mean girl, she attended lavish Bat Mitzvahs but didn’t have a party of her own, she was in a Jewish sorority but wasn’t super involved. Still, her characters are immediately recognizable.
“People either are experiencing these things firsthand and are like ‘oh my god, this is so me,’” she said. “Or they see it and they make fun of it, like ‘oh my god, this is so my daughter. Oh my god, this is so the people in my sorority.’”
Hannah Wiener, a high school senior from Oceanside, Long Island, is a longtime fan of Hechter. For Hanukkah one year, her sister gifted her a personalized Cameo video in which Hechter talked about their similarities and common interests.
Wiener said that she loves Hechter’s content because she finds it relatable. There are a lot of influencers who make similar videos about Jewish life, but Wiener feels like they make fun of it, rather than treat it “as a normal event like Chloe does.” For Wiener, who went to sleepaway camp herself, Hechter’s camp videos are her favorite. She said that she finds them “to be so funny and also just so heartwarming.”
Middle and high schoolers make up a large proportion of Hechter’s audience — she told me that summer “camp girls”, like Wiener, are her biggest fans. Hechter believes her younger self would have been one of them.
“I genuinely think I would have been my own favorite creator,” she said.
The post Whether it’s viral dot cakes or Love Shack Fancy skirts, Chloe Hechter wants you to know that “Jewish-American Princesses did it first” appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
The Iran war ended terribly for the US, and even worse for Israel
A war that began with immense ambition has ended with profound setbacks for both the United States and Israel.
With an emerging U.S.-Iran peace agreement, what initially appeared to be a historic demonstration of military dominance evolved into a vivid illustration of the limits of both Israeli and American power. The conflict also exposed profound failures in strategic competence within that alliance. Washington and Jerusalem planned effectively for the initial decapitation strikes, but were unprepared for the economic and geopolitical consequences that followed.
The result is a war that may ultimately strengthen the Iranian regime politically, despite the damage it suffered militarily; has weakened international perceptions of American military might; and has diminished both Israel’s own strategic circumstances and its most important alliance.
The opening phase of the war appeared spectacularly successful. Israeli intelligence and airpower decapitated large portions of Iran’s military and security leadership with astonishing speed, including by assassinating Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Key military infrastructure suffered major damage, and for a brief moment, it seemed plausible that the Iranian regime might genuinely face collapse or surrender on terms dictated by Washington and Jerusalem.
That perception proved short-lived.
Iran shifted the battlefield away from conventional military confrontation and toward economic coercion. Its closure of the Strait of Hormuz exposed the extraordinary vulnerability of the global economy to relatively inexpensive forms of pressure. Energy markets panicked almost immediately. Governments across Europe, Asia, and the Gulf pushed urgently for de-escalation.
The central strategic reality became impossible to ignore: the U.S.could not tolerate sustained economic disruption, and the Iranian regime has a strong stomach for suffering. The overwhelming military superiority of the U.S. and Israel effectively ceased to matter.
That asymmetry changed the balance of the conflict. And the resulting agreement appears to preserve much of Iran’s architecture of mischief, which the regime’s many critics had hoped to see dismantled.
Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities have been harmed but can be rebuilt; long-term reductions to that firepower are reportedly not on the table in a planned 60-day negotiation. The regime’s regional proxy network — including Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iraqi militias, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad — survives, even though Hezbollah and Hamas have been battered.
And as Israel is not a party to the ceasefire, it cannot advocate for more stringent terms on this front.
The regime itself remains firmly in power and may receive enormous sanctions relief and renewed economic access. Demands for democratic reforms seem to have been set aside, as has any kind of punishment for the regime’s massacre of thousands — and by some reports tens of thousands — of domestic protestors in January.
The latter aspect is especially galling given that President Donald Trump was driven to intervene because of the January massacre, after he promised Iranians that “help is on its way.” Upon launching the war, he declared that it would enable Iranians to “take your country back.”
Ironically, Trump in his first term pulled out of former President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal over objections that it provided funds for the regime while allowing it to run riot. Now, he is settling for an effective reconstitution of that deal — except one with substantially less American leverage.
The implications extend far beyond Iran itself. The war demonstrated that Tehran can generate immediate global economic panic through relatively cheap tools and can leverage that panic into diplomatic concessions. Before the war, fears about Iran’s ability to blackmail the world economy remained somewhat theoretical. After the war, those fears became a demonstrated geopolitical reality.
There is little evidence that either the American or Israeli governments understood in advance the degree to which the global economy had become vulnerable to this form of coercion. This, even though the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz was completely predictable and indeed expected by every strategist I’ve spoken to for decades.
This outcome may be most devastating for the Iranian people themselves. Many Iranians who despise the regime interpreted the opening phase of the conflict as evidence that the dictatorship might finally face genuine collapse. Instead, the regime not only survived but also regained leverage. The machinery of repression remains intact.
But this result is damaging for every party to this war aside from the Iranian regime.
The war has transformed perceptions of American power. For decades, the U.S. has anchored a global system built on the assumption that Washington could manage regional crises with some strategy in mind. That strategy wasn’t always brilliant, but it was rarely clueless. With the Hormuz confrontation, the world watched the U.S. confront a regional adversary with vastly inferior capabilities and fail to control events.
For Israel, the alliance Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spent years cultivating with the American right and with Trump personally has become dangerously fragile. As pressure mounted to stabilize energy markets and prevent wider regional escalation, Trump increasingly presented himself not as a partner coordinating with Israel but as a superior authority managing Israeli actions. He repeatedly framed Israeli military action as dependent on his approval. He cursed Netanyahu in public. He presented Israel as a vassal doing his bidding — something no U.S. president has previously done.
This will destabilize Israel, where much of the governing right previously viewed Trump as a uniquely reliable ally who would support Israeli military objectives without hesitation or conditions.
Previous American presidents pressured Israel privately while still preserving the outward presentation of a relationship between sovereign allies. Trump discarded much of that convention. The new perception weakens Israel’s deterrence dramatically. Plus, with bipartisan support for Israel in Washington even more completely collapsed than after the deleterious war in Gaza, and relations with much of Europe — Israel’s top trading partner — similarly deteriorated, Israel finds itself at a new peak of dangerous international isolation.
This strategic shipwreck bears no resemblance to the sweeping regional transformation that supporters of the war — myself included — initially envisioned. I assumed, partly because of the first days’ successes, that Trump and Netanyahu had a plan. This is not a mistake serious people are likely to make again.
The post The Iran war ended terribly for the US, and even worse for Israel appeared first on The Forward.
