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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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Trump Confirms Conversation with Venezuela’s Maduro
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro holds Simon Bolivar’s sword as he addresses members of the armed forces, Bolivarian Militia, police, and civilians during a rally against a possible escalation of US actions toward the country, at Fort Tiuna military base in Caracas, Venezuela, November 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria
US President Donald Trump confirmed on Sunday that he had spoken with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, but did not provide details on what the two leaders discussed.
“I don’t want to comment on it. The answer is yes,” Trump said when asked if he had spoken with Maduro. He was speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One.
The New York Times first reported Trump had spoken with Maduro earlier this month and discussed a possible meeting between them in the United States.
“I wouldn’t say it went well or badly, it was a phone call,” Trump said regarding the conversation.
The revelation of the phone call comes as Trump continues to use bellicose rhetoric regarding Venezuela, while also entertaining the possibility of diplomacy.
On Saturday, Trump said the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered “closed in its entirety,” but gave no further details, stirring anxiety and confusion in Caracas as his administration ramps up pressure on Maduro’s government.
When asked whether his airspace comments meant strikes against Venezuela were imminent, Trump said: “Don’t read anything into it.”
The Trump administration has been weighing Venezuela-related options to combat what it has portrayed as Maduro’s role in supplying illegal drugs that have killed Americans. The socialist Venezuelan president has denied having any links to the illegal drug trade.
Reuters has reported the options under US consideration include an attempt to overthrow Maduro, and that the US military is poised for a new phase of operations after a massive military buildup in the Caribbean and nearly three months of strikes on suspected drug boats off Venezuela’s coast.
Human rights groups have condemned the strikes as illegal extrajudicial killings of civilians, and some US allies have expressed growing concerns that Washington may be violating international law.
Trump said he would look into whether the US military had carried out a second strike in the Caribbean that killed survivors during a September operation, adding he would not have wanted such a strike.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the strikes are lawful but are intended to be “lethal.”
Trump told military service members last week the US would “very soon” begin land operations to stop suspected Venezuelan drug traffickers.
Maduro and senior members of his administration have not commented on the call. Asked about it on Sunday, Jorge Rodriguez, the head of Venezuela’s National Assembly, said the call was not the topic of his press conference, where he announced a lawmaker investigation into US boat strikes in the Caribbean.
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US Sees Progress After Talks in Florida with Ukraine, but More Work Needed to Reach Deal
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner meet with a Ukrainian delegation in Hallandale Beach, Florida, US, November 30, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Eva Marie Uzcategui
US and Ukrainian officials held what both sides called productive talks on Sunday about a Russia peace deal, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressing optimism about progress despite challenges to ending the more than 3-year-long war.
Rubio met with a Ukrainian delegation led by a new chief negotiator in Florida, his home state, for talks that he said were meant to create a pathway for Ukraine to remain sovereign and independent.
“We continue to be realistic about how difficult this is, but optimistic, particularly given the fact that as we’ve made progress, I think there is a shared vision here that this is not just about ending the war,” Rubio told reporters after the talks concluded. “It is about securing Ukraine’s future, a future that we hope will be more prosperous than it’s ever been.”
The discussions were a follow-up to a new set of negotiations that began with a fresh US blueprint for peace. Critics said the plan initially favored Russia, which started the conflict with a 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were also present representing the US side. Witkoff leaves on Monday for Moscow, where he is expected to meet Russian counterparts for talks this week.
“There’s more work to be done. This is delicate,” Rubio said. “There are a lot of moving parts, and obviously there’s another party involved here … that will have to be a part of the equation, and that will continue later this week, when Mr. Witkoff travels to Moscow.”
Trump has expressed frustration at not being able to end the war. He pledged as a presidential candidate to do so in one day and has said he was surprised it has been so hard, given what he calls a strong relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has largely resisted concessions to stop the fighting.
Trump’s team has pressured Ukraine to make significant concessions itself, including giving up territory to Russia.
The talks shifted on Sunday with a change in leadership from the Ukrainian side. A new chief negotiator, national security council secretary Rustem Umerov, led the discussions for Kyiv after the resignation on Friday of previous team leader Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, amid a corruption scandal at home.
“Ukraine’s got some difficult little problems,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, referring to the corruption scandal, which he said was “not helpful.” He repeated his view that both Russia and Ukraine wanted to end the war and said there was a good chance a deal could be reached.
Umerov thanked the United States and its officials for their support. “US is hearing us, US is supporting us, US is walking besides us,” he said in English as the negotiations began.
After the meeting, he declared it productive. “We discussed all the important matters that are important for Ukraine, for Ukrainian people and US was super supportive,” Umerov said.
The Sunday talks took place near Miami at a private club, Shell Bay, developed by Witkoff’s real estate business.
Zelensky had said he expected the results from previous meetings in Geneva would be “hammered out” on Sunday. In Geneva, Ukraine presented a counter-offer to proposals laid out by US Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll to leaders in Kyiv some two weeks ago.
Ukraine’s leadership, facing a domestic political crisis fueled by a probe into major graft in the energy sector, is seeking to push back on Moscow-friendly terms as Russian forces grind forward along the front lines of the war.
Last week, Zelensky warned Ukrainians, who are weathering widespread blackouts from Russian air strikes on the energy system, that his country was at its most difficult moment yet but pledged not to make a bad deal.
“As a weatherman would say, there’s the inherent difficulty in forecasting because the atmosphere is a chaotic system where small changes can lead to large outcomes,” Kyiv’s first deputy foreign minister Sergiy Kyslytsya, also part of the delegation, wrote on X from Miami on Sunday.
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Netanyahu’s Pardon Request: What Happens Next?
Israeli President Isaac Herzog speaks during a press conference with Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics in Riga, Latvia, Aug. 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
i24 News – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday submitted a formal request for a presidential pardon to President Isaac Herzog, i24NEWS Hebrew legal commentator Avishai Grintzig revealed.
What happens next? The request now enters a detailed, multi-stage review process involving the Ministry of Justice, law-enforcement bodies, and the President’s Residence.
Once a request is filed, it is first transferred to the Pardons Department in the Ministry of Justice.
The department begins gathering extensive information, seeking input from the Prison Service, Israel Police, the State Attorney’s Office, welfare and medical authorities, and the Enforcement and Collection Authority.
After assembling the material, the Pardons Department submits its opinion to the Minister of Justice. The minister then issues his own recommendation. If a conflict of interest arises, the government must appoint another minister to handle the matter.
The minister’s recommendation is then sent to the legal department at the President’s Residence, where the file is reviewed, supplemented as needed, and passed on to the President’s Legal Advisor.
The Legal Advisor prepares an independent opinion and may conduct additional inquiries with the Pardons Department or other relevant bodies. Once complete, the full file — including all opinions and documentation — is presented to the President for a final decision.
If the President approves the pardon, he signs a clemency document, which is then countersigned by the Minister of Justice (or a substitute minister). The applicant is notified in writing and receives the signed document.
If the President rejects the request, the applicant receives a written notice explaining the decision.