Episode Details

A list of ways to help Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

This Friday’s Zoom call will be at 1 PM Eastern, our usual time. Our guest will be Chapman University Professor Emeritus Nubar Hovsepian, author of the new book, Edward Said: The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual. We’ll talk about Professor Hovsepian’s insights into Said, his close friend, and about what we might learn from Said’s work for this moment in Israel-Palestine and the United States.

Ask Me Anything

Our next Ask Me Anything session, for PREMIUM subscribers only, will be this Wednesday, November 12, from 1-2 PM Eastern time.

Cited in Today’s Video

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz’s message to his congregation that after Mamdani’s victory, life for New York Jews is “beginning to feel like the 1930s.”

Jason Sokol’s, There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975.

Things to Read

(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)

In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), I argued that Zohran Mamdani’s victory may herald a coalition between anti-Zionists and liberal Zionists that can transform the Democratic Party.

Why the polls may understate Mamdani’s share of the Jewish vote.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz, 50 years ago, on last week’s Parsha, Parshat Vayeira.

Rabbi Aron Wander on the psychotheology of American Zionism.

I’ll be speaking on November 10 at Cornell University and Congregation Tikkun v’Or in Ithaca, New York and on December 8 at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism in New York City.

Reader Response

I occasionally publish letters from readers who take issue with something I’ve said. This one comes from Sophia (last name withheld):

I’ve been reading your coverage of Mamdani and although I think a lot of it is very fair criticism of establishment Judaism, respectfully, I think you are missing one major point. Speaking only for myself, I can tell you that I *hate* Cuomo, and that the idea of voting for him is repellent to me. I too hate the Islamophobia that is showing in our community, and I hate the message that sexual harassment is acceptable in a way that antisemitism is not. These messages are embarrassing and offensive to me.

Two things can be true at the same time, though. I have no issue with people being so-called critical of Israel, and of that criticism having grown in intensity in the last two years (it certainly has for me). However, I find Mamdani to be