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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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Nearly Half of Jewish Students Report Experiencing Antisemitism on US College Campuses, Survey Finds
A student puts on their anti-Israel graduation cap reading “From the river to the sea” at the People’s Graduation, hosted for Mahmoud Khalil and other students from New York University. Photo: Angelina Katsanis via Reuters Connect
The campus antisemitism crisis has changed the college experience for American Jewish students, affecting how they live, socialize, and perceive themselves as Jews, according to new survey results released by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in partnership with Hillel International.
A striking 42 percent of Jewish students reported experiencing antisemitism during their time on campus, and of that group, 55 percent said they felt that being Jewish at a campus event threatened their safety.
The survey also found that 34 percent of Jewish students avoid being detected as Jews, hiding their Jewish identity due to fear of antisemitism.
Meanwhile, 38 percent of Jewish students said they decline to utter pro-Israel viewpoints on campus, including in class, for fear of being targeted by anti-Zionists. The rate of self-censorship is significantly higher for Jewish students who have already been subjected to antisemitism, registering at 68 percent.
“No Jewish student should have to hide their identity out of fear of antisemitism, yet that’s the reality for too many students today,” Hillel International chief executive officer Adam Lehman said in a statement on Tuesday. “Our work on the ground every day is focused on changing that reality by creating environments where all Jewish students can find welcoming communities and can fully and proudly express their Jewish identities without fear or concern.”
The survey, included in AJC’s new “The State of Antisemitism in America” report, added that 32 percent of Jewish students feel that campus groups promote antisemitism or a learning environment that is hostile to Jews, while 25 percent said that antisemitism was the basis of their being “excluded from a group or an event on campus.”
Jewish students endure these indignities while preserving their overwhelming support for Israel. Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed identified caring about Israel as a central component of Jewish identity and 76 percent agreed that calling for its destruction or describing it as an illegitimate state is antisemitic.
“While we welcome the fact that the vast majority of campuses have not been disrupted by uncontrolled protests in the past year, the data make clear that Jewish students are still experiencing antisemitism on their campuses,” Laura Shaw Frank, the AJC’s vice president of its Center for Education Advocacy, said in a statement. “This survey gives us a critical look into the less visible, but no less important problems, that Jews face on campus.”
She continued, “Understanding the ways in which Jews are being excluded and changing their behavior out of fear of antisemitism is vitally important as we work with institutions of higher education to create truly inclusive campus communities.”
The AJC and Hillel’s survey results are consistent with others in which Jewish students have participated in recent months.
According, to a recent survey of Jewish undergraduates of the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), a significant portion of Jewish students still find the climate on campus to be hostile and feel the need to hide their identity over two years after the campus saw an explosion of extreme anti-Zionist activity and Nazi graffiti.
The survey, conducted by Penn’s local Hillel International chapter, found that 40 percent of respondents said it is difficult to be Jewish at Penn and 45 percent said they “feel uncomfortable or intimidated because of their Jewish identity or relationship with Israel.”
Meanwhile, the results showed a staggering 85 percent of survey participants reported hearing about, witnessing, or experiencing “something antisemitic,” as reported by Franklin’s Forum, an alumni-led online outlet which posts newsletters regarding developments at the university. Another 31 percent of Jewish Penn students said they feel the need to hide their Jewishness to avoid discrimination, which is sometimes present in the classroom, as 26 percent of respondents said they have “experienced antisemitic or anti-Israel comments from professors.”
Overall, 80 percent of Jewish students hold that anti-Israel activity is “often” antisemitic and that Israel’s conduct in war is “held to an unfair standard compared to other nations.”
College faculty play an outsized role in promoting antisemitism on the campus, according to a new study by AMCHA Initiative which focused on the University of California system. The study, titled “When Faculty Take Sides: How Academic Infrastructure Drives Antisemitism at the University of California,” exposed Oct 7 denialism; faculty calling for driving Jewish institutions off campus; the founding of pro-Hamas, Faculty for Justice in Palestine groups; and hundreds of endorsers of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
The University of California system is a microcosm of faculty antisemitism across the US, the AMCHA Initiative explained in the exhaustive 158-page report, which focused on the Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz campuses.
“The report documents how concentrated networks of faculty activists on each campus, often operating through academic units and faculty-led advocacy formations, convert institutional platforms into vehicles for organized anti-Zionist advocacy and mobilization,” the report stated. “It shows how those pathways are associated with recurring student harms and broader campus disruption. It then outlines concrete steps the UC Regents can take to restore institutional neutrality in academic units and set enforceable boundaries so UC resources and authority are not used to advance activist agendas inside the university’s core educational functions.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Forverts podcast, episode 6: At-risk languages
דער פֿאָרווערטס האָט שוין אַרויסגעלאָזט דעם זעקסטן קאַפּיטל פֿונעם ייִדישן פּאָדקאַסט, Yiddish With Rukhl. דאָס מאָל איז די טעמע „שפּראַכן אין אַ סכּנה“. אין דעם קאַפּיטל לייענט שׂרה־רחל שעכטער פֿאָר אַן אַרטיקל פֿונעם ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסט דזשייק שנײַדער, „וואָס אַקטיוויסטן פֿאַר שפּראַכן אין אַ סכּנה קענען זיך אָפּלערנען איינער פֿונעם אַנדערן.“
צו הערן דעם פּאָדקאַסט, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
אויב איר ווילט אויך לייענען דעם געדרוקטן טעקסט פֿונעם אַרטיקל, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ און קוקט אונטן בײַם סוף פֿון דער זײַט.
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An audiobook narrator told Zionists to kill themselves. A popular romance novelist hired him anyway.
A bestselling romance novelist is facing backlash from her Jewish readers after hiring an audiobook narrator who previously posted on social media telling Zionists to kill themselves.
Abby Jimenez’s novel The Night We Met, set to be published next month, features voice actor Zachary Webber as the narrator of the audiobook.
“If you’re a Zionist and you exist, you should not do that anymore,” Webber posted on his Instagram story in September 2024. “No one likes you and you suck, and go f—cking kill yourself.”
Webber later apologized on Instagram, writing that his comment was “a poorly-worded joke aimed at a violent settler-colonialist enterprise. I regret any language that suggested otherwise. Fortunately, my anti-Zionist Jewish friends understood it was a joke, and moved on with their beautiful lives.” He did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment.
Webber, who has a low, gravelly voice and sums up his job as “I READ SEX,” has narrated more than 250 steamy audiobooks, including eight of Jimenez’s. But amid backlash over Webber’s social media comments, Jimenez originally said she would go in a different direction for the audio narration of The Night We Met, a novel about forbidden love between two best friends.
But earlier this month, Jimenez changed her mind.
“I know I mentioned that I was going with a male voice actor that I’ve never used before, but I’m going to be really honest with you — the fit wasn’t right,” Jimenez posted in her private readers Facebook group. “We did a day of recording and he just wasn’t Chris. All I could think the whole time was how perfectly Zachary would have captured the tone and personality of this character and at the end of recording Day One, I made the choice to change narrators.”
Several readers commented in the Facebook group expressing concern about Webber. But those comments were removed, with Jimenez citing group rules against “political or negative conversations.” She added that she did not “want to be forced to leave to protect my mental health. I cannot go to a comment section to see vitriol, even if it’s vitriol I happen to agree with.”
Neither Jimenez’s literary agent nor Hachette Book Group, the publisher of The Night We Met, responded to the Forward’s request for comment.
The backlash among Jimenez’s readers represents the latest flare-up over Israel in progressive-coded subcultures, from knitting circles to vegan cooking. The romance publishing world, consistently the top-grossing genre in adult fiction, has not been immune: Other recent flashpoints have included boycotts of authors labeled “Zionist” and the decision by SteamyLitCon, a romance book convention, to remove Israeli-born author Michelle Mars from its lineup last year over social media posts organizers said were “anti-Palestinian.”
“It just made me really sad about the state of the industry,” said Chayla Wolfberg, a Jewish author and former fan of Jimenez’s books. “There’s a lot of obviously very complicated things when it comes to engaging with criticism of Israel. And what [Webber] was doing wasn’t that.”
Happily ever after?
Romance publishing has spent the past few decades broadening its vision of who gets a love story — elevating LGBTQ+ narratives, highlighting authors and characters of color, and celebrating diverse body types. But some Jewish writers and readers say they have been excluded from that push.
The lack of Jewish representation in romance was part of what inspired 27-year-old Wolfberg to self-publish Late Night Love, a Saturday Night Live-inspired enemies-to-lovers rom-com featuring a Jewish protagonist. Too often, Wolfberg said, Jewish characters only appear in stories defined by trauma and suffering.
Romance, by contrast, is governed by two nonnegotiable rules: The story must center on a developing romantic relationship, and the conclusion must be emotionally satisfying — the genre’s trademark “happily ever after” (HEA), or at least “happy for now” (HFN). When it comes to Jewish storytelling, Wolfberg said, that structure can feel subversive.
But Wolfberg didn’t feel accepted by the broader romance book community. When she promoted her work online, viewers commented that she was a Zionist and thus shouldn’t support her book.
“It is a radical thing, especially if you are from a historically oppressed or a minority community, to be writing a story that has a happy ending and isn’t just about suffering,” Wolfberg said. “But I think that is where anti-Zionism unfortunately creeps in, in the way that it has become part of the lexicon for people who are anti-oppression.”
Wolfberg has instead found support mostly among other Jewish authors. She said her next book will feature a character who has family in Israel — even though she’s aware that aspect could make it a tough sell.
Meanwhile, popular romance authors whose books have nothing to do with Judaism or Israel have also been targeted.
In a 2015 interview with the Jewish Chronicle, Sarah J. Maas, author of the massively popular A Court of Thorns and Roses series, mentioned going on a Birthright trip to Israel. Maas said she “left Israel overflowing with pride,” and described the country as “a magical, welcoming place.” Nearly a decade later, those comments landed her on the X account Zionists in Publishing, which points out Zionist authors to boycott.
Rebecca Yarros, author of the bestselling romantasy series Empyrean, appeared on a similar account that exposes Zionist authors. Her offense? Posting on Oct. 15, 2023, that “children are not collateral damage” and that she was “horrified by the despicable attack on Israel” and “terrified for the children and Palestinian innocents in Gaza.”
The extent to which those blacklists actually impact sales is unclear; both Yarros and Maas have sold millions of copies.
But it’s still a dynamic Jewish romance enthusiasts would prefer to avoid. In response, they’ve carved out their own spaces: Author Jean Meltzer, who writes Jewish rom-coms such as The Matzah Ball and Kissing Kosher, runs a Facebook group called “Jewish Women Talk About Romance Books,” which has 3,300 members. There, women discuss books they read as part of the The Jewish Joy Book Club, which has one rule: “We read books where nobody dies at the end.”
The need for a Jewish space in the romance genre was also evident to Gillian Geller, a 35-year–old in Toronto, Canada, who used to run a book blog focused on all kinds of novels, with a focus on romance. But after Oct. 7, she shifted to spotlighting Jewish books.
For her, Jimenez’s decision to rehire Webber is another example of how Jewish authors and readers have been excluded from a genre that is otherwise increasingly sensitive to inclusion.
“I felt like if I wasn’t stepping up to help promote these books,” she said, “then nobody else would.”
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