Presidential historians on America’s political divide and ‘pro-Israel’ vs. ‘anti-Israel’ politicians; an Unorthodox election podcast; more from Tablet Magazine of New York, New York, United States "What to drink on Election Day" for Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Presidential historians on America’s political divide and ‘pro-Israel’ vs. ‘anti-Israel’ politicians; an Unorthodox election podcast; more from Tablet Magazine of New York, New York, United States "What to drink on Election Day" for Tuesday, November 8, 2016
The Troy Brothers Bemoan the Election (An Epistolary Bromance)

GIL TROY AND TEVI TROY
Part Three: Two Queens boys turned presidential historians on opposite sides of America’s great political divide, on American exceptionalism, the Jewish left, and being pro- and anti-Israel

UNITED STATES

The Troy Brothers Bemoan the Election (An Epistolary Bromance)

[Updated] Part Four: Two Queens boys turned presidential historians on opposite sides of America’s great political divide, on the power of political slogans, American optimism, and the ‘national stress test’ that was this campaign by Gil Troy and Tevi Troy

This is part 4 of an exchange between Tevi Troy and his brother Gil Troy about the 2016 presidential election. Here’s part 1 (Friday, Nov. 4), part 2 (Monday, Nov. 7), and part 3 (Tuesday, Nov. 8), all below. The conversation will end here tomorrow after results of the election are in.
***
Nov. 8, 2016: Gil Troy writes:

For the next round, Tevi, I’d love for you to write from the gut about your hopes and fears for our country, picking up in some way on the idea of American exceptionalism, and its rejection by sectors of both parties.
I love a great political slogan. The Revolutionaries’ “Don’t Tread on Me,” expressed Americans’ desire for independence and dignity. “Fifty-four forty or fight” in 1844 drew a clear line in the sand about American intentions in the Oregon territories. U.S. Grant’s 1864 “Vote as you shot” crudely distinguished between Southern traitors and Northern patriots. Herbert Hoover’s “A Chicken in Every Pot” conveyed the great optimism of the 1920s that prosperity would never end. Franklin Roosevelt’s double whammy, promising “Happy Days are Here Again,” if Americans accepted his “New Deal,” offered reassurance and reforms when Hoover’s prosperity ran out of chickens. Bill Clinton’s 1992 slogan “The New Covenant,” while it didn’t quite resonate, conveyed a sense of seriousness, his desire to be seen as “Putting People First” and to forge what he eventually, called, more memorably “The Third Way,” triangulating between Big Government liberalism and “Government is the problem not the solution” Reaganite conservatism. Even Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can,” while somewhat trite, inspired people, empowering the once powerless, capturing the historic nature of his quest to be the first African-American president.
Against that historic background, the emptiness of the 2016 election was captured in the vapidity of the two rivals’ slogans. In fairness, on one level Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton hands down in the slogan war. Wherever I went, when I would say, even to pro-Clinton crowds, “Donald Trump promises to make America…” they would shout, lustily, “GREAT AGAIN.” And when I added, and “Hillary Clinton promises….” there was often awkward silence—and then, in one high school, great laughter and applause that they had been played. Admittedly, after the Democratic Convention some would mumble “Stronger Together”—which sounds vaguely Stalinistic to me, or “I’m with her”—which evokes “I’m with stupid.”
The meaninglessness of Clinton’s slogans conveyed the void at the heart of her campaign, and her vision for America. Walter Mondale-style, she reached out to various interest groups, wooing women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, immigrants, LGBTs, Jews, many of whom were motivated by their fear of Trump. But her campaign was so defensive, so fearful of offending these groups she was courting, so concerned with maintaining her lead, that she didn’t offer a lyrical, inspiring, vision that could pass what I call the “Richard Stands Test,” the schoolkid’s misstatement of the Pledge of Allegiance line, “for which it stands.”
Being tolerant and inclusive, while noble, is a foreign policy not a national mission statement. Hillary Clinton’s campaign validated (what I called last time) America’s wonderful, welcoming, pluralistic Republic of Everything but did little to build a Republic of Something, to create a new consensus, that both creates a new national vision rooted in the past while looking toward the future, and offers any kind of diagnosis and cure for the fundamental ailments that are so clearly afflicting the United States: a deindustrializing economy that isn’t creating enough middle class jobs; a coarsening culture that is creating legions of the walking wounded lacking discipline, purpose, hope; a fragmenting society that is losing its sense of community; and a polarizing politics that has politicians boasting about the gridlock they will deliver because their hatred of the rival party is trumping their love of America and commitment to governance. Moreover, she offered no promise of retreating from Barack Obama’s assault on the pride, the celebration of American values, the refusal to cower or, yes, apologize, that has always been at the heart of American exceptionalism.
Being tolerant and inclusive, while noble, is a foreign policy not a national mission statement.
Now, give Trump and his slogan some credit. “Make America Great Again,” evokes nostalgia for the old Republic of Something. Trump recognizes the serious breakdowns in our economy, culture, society, and politics. His campaign was buoyed by many of the same frustrations that lifted the Bernie Sanders campaign from punchline to powerhouse—although both of them used “Free Trade” and “Wall Street” as scapegoats that miss the real economic problem. The great mass middle class civilization that emerged after World War II enabled autoworkers and longshoremen to earn enough to have savings; today’s economy of part-time WalMart workers and minimum wage earners in automated factories produces the dislocation and frustration that has fueled this campaign—but not been addressed.
Unfortunately, Trump’s demagogic technique of divide and conquer, his campaign to be the plutocratic king of white male America not the increasingly multicultural United States of America, his lack of experience, discipline, consistency, substance, makes him the tribune of The Republic of Nothing, a nation of New Nihilists, who will say anything, believe in nothing, and do what pleases them when it pleases them because they lack any core ideals, any true authorities, any traditional anchors. Coming from the world of Reality TV—which is fake—running a campaign of 140-character insults and postures, offered a dystopic model not of an improved reality but of a coarsened, vulgar, abusive America.
To the extent that a campaign is a national stress test, America failed—and has become a laughingstock worldwide, no longer inspiring oppressed peoples with this exercise in popular participation but inviting mockery with this plunge into idiocy and unreason.
In a long, brutal history of American elections, this electoral season—and the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump campaigns—will have a special place in the Hall of Shame, among the worst, the most bruising, divisive, demoralizing. But all is not lost—yet. The John Kennedy transition in 1960, the Ronald Reagan transition in 1980, showed that candidates can evolve over three months from won-by-a-whisker damaged winners to confident presidents with a mandate. In a land where history is last week’s most forwarded YouTube video of cats playing or babies drooling, memories are short and malleable. And in a nation that still represents the great ideals of liberty, democracy, and equality, the possibilities of redemption remain, like prosperity in yet another slogan, just around the corner.
Tevi Troy responds:

It’s hard to disagree with anything in your last missive, so I will pick up where you left off. It is true that this has been an exceedingly dismal campaign, and as we have made clear throughout this exchange, neither of us is very happy about it—nor is the country.
But despite the disappointment of this campaign, I believe that there is a reason for hope. First, the unpopularity of both candidates does suggest that most Americans think there is indeed something very wrong with this election, and with the candidates. Both of them won their respective nominations more for structural reasons and flaws in the selection process then for any compelling narrative about a hopeful America that they were trying to convey.
So the candidates are on the debit side, but I would put American institutions and the American people on the asset side of the ledger. American institutions are strong enough to withstand the poor policies of either candidate, and strong enough to resist excessive power grabs by officials who don’t respect democratic norms or the rule of law.
As Gil put it, we remain “a nation that still represents the great ideals of liberty, democracy, and equality.” One bad election will not take that away. I recognize that this may seem overly optimistic. In fact, one piece of feedback we have both received from a mutual friend is that we are excessively optimistic. (We can’t help it: it’s the Troy way.) This particular friend thought that my hope for an American exceptionalism agenda on the part of the Jewish organizations was a naïve one. I didn’t put that thought out there believing that those organizations would embrace this perspective immediately, but part of the role of we historian-commentators is that we put ideas out there in the hopes that smart people will read them and take us up on them. And there I think is the promise of America. We still have free-speech; we still have strong voices out there expressing every different perspective; and we still have hopes for a better tomorrow, whatever our actual tomorrow informs us happens on this Election Day.
***
Nov. 7, 2016: Gil Troy writes:

I just completed a four-city, one-week speaking tour. The whole country, from North to South, right to left, Jewish and non-Jewish, seems to be suffering from PTSD: Pre-Trump-Clinton-Election Stress Disorder. Amid all this uncertainty, I am willing to predict that the next president will have a Jewish son-in-law, and despite the anxiety, let’s emphasize one bit of good news: The next president will support Israel more enthusiastically—and hopefully more effectively—than the incumbent.
God bless America! In Europe, too many campaigns historically pivoted around the question of who bashed the Jews the most. How wonderful that in the United States, both candidates vie to prove who is more “pro-Israel.” That competition reinforces the broad, left-to-right American consensus that has supported Israel enthusiastically for decades—and, despite our worries, is at a historic peak. That competition stems from the fact that in an ugly world of ISIS and Assad, of Islamicist terrorism and Middle East instability, an anti-Israel president would be anti-American too, overlooking America’s one stable democratic ally in that crazy, critical region. And that competition demonstrates that America’s traditional bipartisan support for Israel is good for America, not just Israel: Healthy democracies need some issues, like supporting Israel, on which both rival parties agree.
I’m not naïve. I understand that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump probably would express their support for Israel in different ways, although I also know that a candidate’s promises are not binding, especially regarding foreign policy. Barack Obama was sure in 2008 that he was going to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, which remains open. I also don’t think he ever imagined—nor did we—that he would kill as many terrorists by drone as he has.
Still, the differences in Clinton’s and Trump’s respective Israel approaches merit debate. Beyond proclaiming the most embarrassing foreign-policy credential—evah—that he was grand marshal of the Israel Day Parade—Trump has alternated between the passionately pro-Netanyahu “Israel right or wrong” school, promising no daylight between the two countries, and the more neutral “let’s make a deal” school, assuming some great deal-maker can impose the right borders on the squabbling partners.
Clinton in her career has vacillated. She started out closer to the “tough love” school President Obama (and the Israeli left) embrace—assuming Big Daddy America must force misbehaving Israel to compromise and stop beating up those nice, disenfranchised Palestinians. As New York senator, she reflected her husband Bill’s “love-love” school, understanding that if Israel feels supported by the United States and respected internationally, it’s more likely to compromise. And, as secretary of state, she was yet another “Peace Processor,” one of those perennially (Shimon) Peres-ian, Sisyphean optimists, who since the 1990s have been negotiating away, again and again and again, without asking why the Oslo peace process failed and what new understandings of reality (and of the Palestinian refusal to accept reality) are required.
In an ideal world, we would have had a mature, substantive, respectful debate in the Jewish community and beyond about which of these five approaches to take. In an even more ideal world, that debate would have taken us to the philosophical assumptions underlying each candidate’s foreign policy. Obama’s years in office have shaken Americans’ traditional faith in American exceptionalism. Both the humiliation imposed on us by Americans being kidnapped, beheaded, and blown up—as well as President Obama’s distaste for America’s traditional self-confidence and sense of national virtue—have many Americans doubting our competence and steadiness abroad, let alone American exceptionalism.
As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton’s celebration of American values—particularly her role modeling for women—expressed more faith in America’s special heritage to the world than the president did. Donald Trump’s “great again” talk more crudely expresses a nostalgia for that sense of self-confidence—and that mix of post-WWII power and righteousness with which he grew up. My gut tells me that if the candidates did ever speak in such sophisticated, theoretical terms, Hillary Clinton would park more of her support for Israel in shared values, Donald Trump would park it in the realm of mutual national interests reinforced by admiration for Israel’s chutzpah and strength.
Alas, such heady but important discussions have not even engaged the foreign policy wonk-etariat. Instead, in this electoral race to the bottom, what I have most heard in the Jewish community this week is that “Hillary’s a crook and she’s anti-Israel like Obama” or that “Trump’s a monster and he lies about Israel like he lies about everything else.” What I learn from this is: We must stop using the phrase “anti-Israel” about anyone unless that person truly rejects Israel’s right to exist, and that, whoever wins on Tuesday, we have a lot of healing and rebuilding of trust to do—in the Jewish community and in the good ole’ U.S. of A.
Tevi Troy responds:

Thanks for the note, and safe travels. I was glad I got to see you—briefly—on this trip. I regret the geographic distance between us makes our in-person interactions more limited than I—or our dear mother—would like. As you know, her favorite word is “togetha.”
You have previously mentioned to me your concerns about American society and the apparent worsening of such divisions in recent years. I wonder if a presidential election brings out these divisions and things will calm down once the election is over. This does not mean that either presidential candidate will miraculously become popular—or even bearable—post-election, but that people will move on and live their lives once the worst of the election divisions are over.
The excessive rhetoric of campaign season points to another problem, though. I recall that during the 2012 election, people on the left were saying the worst things about Mitt Romney. Ads claimed he fired someone whose spouse then died of cancer, as if he were responsible for the death. Joe Biden told a black audience that Republicans were going to “put y’all back in chains,” which was one of the more disgraceful comments we have heard from a sitting vice president. Then after the election, Romney suddenly became that nice guy who pumped his own gas and went to Disneyland.
Romney is not the only one to get that treatment. John McCain and George W. Bush were subjected to hysterical attacks as if they were all somehow completely outside of the mainstream of American politics. Charlie Cooke had a good piece on this recently, and Jonah Goldberg made a similar point back in July. The excessive rhetoric deployed against previous Republican candidates blunts the potency of similar attacks against Trump. Even some liberals acknowledge this. Bill Maher recently said that Romney, Bush, and McCain “were honorable men who we disagreed with and we should have kept it that way. So we cried wolf, and that was wrong.”
As for the Jewish in-laws, I am not sure that I would take too much comfort there. After all, Hillary’s Jewish adviser, Sidney Blumenthal, sends her missives from his anti-Israel son Max (Gil, can I use the “anti-Israel” designation for Max?) Should I somehow take comfort that both Blumenthals are Jewish? And as for Hillary’s back-and-forth career on Israel, I fear that both her foreign-policy and political advisers will pose a real problem for Israel should she be elected. Campaign manager Robby Mook even told Clinton not to speak about Israel in front of a group of Democratic activists because Israel is presumably so unpopular in those circles.
This does not mean that I pin my hopes on the fact that Ivanka converted to Judaism, or—as Gil points out—that Trump was grand marshal of the Salute to Israel parade. I am, however, generally more comfortable with the Republican position on Israel and on Republican foreign-policy advisers on the subject of Israel. This does not make me pro-Trump, but it does mean that I see it as important that the Republicans retain both the House and Senate, so that they could be a check on the Israel-criticizing tendencies of the Clinton-Obama foreign-policy team. (See, I am already being more careful with the “anti-Israel” term. Perhaps Gil’s admonition will catch on, at least in the Troy family. Sigh.)
While I appreciate and share your hope that both parties in America staunchly support Israel, I see worrisome signs that the parties are diverging on this issue, with the GOP clearly being the more supportive party. And given that you and your family live in Israel, you will feel the results of this election more acutely than I will.
So I join you in hoping that “Love-Love” Hillary emerges; should she win, I fear that we will end up with what you generously called “Tough Love” Hillary. And the “Tough” tends to take precedence over the “Love.”
Gil Troy responds:

Thanks for your concerns. Yes, it was fun seeing you and introducing you to a new kosher restaurant, I assumed you had tried every one of them in New York by now.
The growing polarization—and estrangement—in America does worry me. Although you and I could have a fun presidential-historian-nerd duel citing examples of nastiness in previous campaigns with the intensity that you and your son Ezzie fenced by exchanging the names of obscure baseball Hall of Famers when he was 5(!), something feels different. I think of the campaign as a national stress test checking our national health, and often highlighting underlying problems. You’ve repeatedly heard my riff from my Age of Clinton book that we were once a Republic of Something, united by core consensus ideals, and this new Republic of Everything—and Nothing—of ours—is more welcoming but also deeply nihilistic, selfish, tunnel-visioned, lost.
And, yes, you’re right, Max Blumenthal qualifies as anti-Israel, given his loathsome, amoral, ahistorical, disproportionate comparisons between Palestinian cities and Nazi concentration camps. He proves why we shouldn’t use the “anti-Israel” charge too broadly. We need to keep it as a term of opprobrium for hateful extremists like him—otherwise we Jews are also crying wolf.
And, yes, I worry that some of Hillary Clinton advisers, while not “anti-Israel” like Blumenthal, are Bash-Israel-firsters, while others are those sapped, now-wearisome, peace-processing dinosaurs still preaching from a 1990s hymnal, still overlooking Palestinian rejectionism and terrorism.
Some leading Democrat must pull a William F. Buckley. Just as Buckley, America’s leading conservative, called out Pat Buchanan in the early 1990s, saying such anti-Zionism masking anti-Semitism did not belong in the Republican Party, I challenge Barack Obama when he retires to echo Buckley, reading out the genuine haters from the Democratic coalition (note this is an invitation, not a prediction).
But these worries about Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are balanced out by seeing the Love-Lovers like Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton’s own leaked intentions to set a different, more constructive, tone with Israel than Obama has. Moreover, I have no idea what Donald Trump would do regarding Israel because I have no idea what this political novice would do regarding anything. He has no political track record—and serious impulse-control problems. Just because a bunch of Orthodox Jewish lawyers on his payroll whose kids study in the West Bank tell him to be pro-Bibi doesn’t guarantee that those sentiments would survive a Trumpian temper tantrum if Netanyahu treated a President Trump as he has treated President Obama.
Your lovely hope—which I share—“that people will move on and live their lives once the worst of the election divisions are over”—is imperiled by this blustering, ungracious candidate who vowed to challenge the legitimacy of American democracy by calling the election “rigged” if the American people dare reject him. This unprecedented assault on the process by a major-party nominee represents a characteristic Trumpian irresponsibility that is far more dangerous—to the United States, and by extension to its allies, including Israel—than the bleatings of little Maxie Blumenthal.
Tevi Troy responds:

Here is potentially something that could bring Jews together over the next four, eight, or even 12 years and beyond. Jews recognize how important American exceptionalism has been for Israel, for the Jewish people in America, and also for the world at large. Even if we as a community have many disagreements on a whole host of domestic and foreign-policy issues, there is–I think—a shared belief in the importance of America as a nation that both protects the Jews but also advances basic ideals about human rights, democracy, and freedom. This could be an agenda item for the wide swath of Jewish organizations that overpopulate Washington: Promote America as a force for good, regardless of who wins the election, and press the incoming administration to make sure it is pursuing that goal. Pursuing this agenda could lead to positive policy responses from the new administration, but it could also help determine the shape of the foreign-policy debate so that we get more acceptable foreign-policy candidates in the year 2020.
***
Nov. 6, 2012 Tevi Troy writes:

When the details about the James Comey investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails came out this summer, it seemed like they treated Clinton with kid gloves, handing out a number of immunity deals that normally would not be given and not getting her on record under oath at the start. At the time, Comey was lauded as the greatest lawman since Elliot Ness. Now, when he has come forward and said that they are still investigating and that there is this new trove of emails, he is just this terrible partisan.
It seems to me that the Department of Justice is typically fairly aggressive in prosecuting people for these kinds of crimes. Scooter Libby was prosecuted as a result of an investigation about something that it is clear he did not do—leak Valerie Plame’s name to Robert Novak. Dinesh D’Souza was clearly guilty of illegal campaign contributions, but the prison sentence seemed out of whack with what should have been punished with a fine. And Obama’s Affordable Care Act wouldn’t have passed without an extra Democratic senator elected in the wake of a wrongheaded investigation of GOP Sen. Ted Stevens that cost him his Senate seat. I am generally uncomfortable with overly aggressive Department of Justice prosecutions, but if they are going to be engaging in that kind of activity, it is only fair to treat both parties the same way.
What does this all mean for our election? When people start to question the legitimacy in the fairness of government, it erodes the basic building blocks of civil society. I do have a real fear that post-election we could have a significant number of people saying that whichever candidate wins is illegitimate. This would be unfortunate. We have a mostly successful 200-plus-year experiment in a democratic republic, a nation that has given great opportunities to the people who live here but has also been a beacon of hope to the world. I would hope that one election with two awful candidates would not threaten that larger enterprise. Such a result would be a tragedy for this nation, and for the world as a whole.
Gil Troy responds:

Hi—so, here’s where you start seeing a difference in our perspectives. First, if I were to write about the Justice Department and its prosecutorial approach, I would instinctively find examples from both sides of the aisle. Your litany of Republican woes, without saying so exactly, implies partisan bias, just as the Clintons during the 1990s could only see how Republicans criminalized politics by targeting Democrats.
Since Watergate, even though political corruption is down dramatically from the bad old days of the 1950s and 1960s, let alone the 19th century, prosecutions for political corruption are up. The good news: less tolerance for behavior that was once normalized. The bad news: the criminalization of politics that has hurt Democrats and Republicans alike.
Second, when the director of the FBI spent 14-and-a-half minutes berating a leading presidential candidate, and 30 seconds explaining that he nevertheless didn’t think her missteps were convictable and thus they were not prosecutable, I was inspired. I thought that was a great lesson in law and civics, that all elements of wrongdoing don’t necessarily justify prosecution in a system that convicts only based on guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.” At the same time, I was appalled by the bad judgment Hillary Clinton demonstrated [in choosing to use a private server] and was reminded that, as in the 1990s, the Clintons always used “not prosecutable” as some kind of absolution. “Not prosecutable or convictable,” is not the standard of behavior by which I live or you live or we wish our kids to live—and it is not to me an acceptable standard of behavior for a future president.
And finally, your analysis ends in a kind of sanitized way. When you write, “When people start to question the legitimacy in the fairness of government, it erodes the basic building blocks of civil society,” I wonder, “what people?” This year, it isn’t just a generalized phenomenon. This is a problem that started, in many ways, with Donald Trump’s reprehensible comment about “the rigged election.” And I can’t help wondering that if your seeking refuge into worries about “people” reflects a kind of instinctive protectiveness toward the Republican nominee—even if you dislike him.
More broadly, of course, I agree with you. The polls showing that since the 1950s, faith in government, in Congress, in the presidency, has been plummeting does suggest the crisis of legitimacy about which you spoke. But in this campaign cycle, Donald Trump has been the major cause of those doubts and, on this one, Hillary Clinton shoulders far less blame.
Tevi Troy responds:

I know I’ll get another crack on Tuesday, but your missive warrants a brief response. I’m happy to list some overly aggressive investigations of Democrats, including those of John Edwards for doing something sordid but not illegal and Sen. Bob Menendez for doing legislative outreach on behalf of a donor that did not seem to be out of the ordinary. The criminalization of political differences leads to careers being ruined and a loss of faith in the system. And on the loss-of-faith point, Trump was wrong to suggest he wouldn’t accept the results of the election. Period. But there were plenty of Democrats questioning the legitimacy of George W. Bush after the 2000 election. And John Kerry waited an inappropriately long time before conceding the 2004 election. Kerry now claims that he was some kind of hero for conceding, but the story at the time was that he had to be pushed into doing so by the late Ted Kennedy.
Every election cycle, we hear people threatening to leave the country if their candidate loses. I wish all those who made such threats would follow through with them and not let the door hit them on the way out. Hysterical and dire warnings about the death of the republic based on the results of a particular election are bad for the country and bad for democracy. If Gil wants to see that belief as some kind of secret sympathy for Trump, he is welcome to.
***
Nov. 3, 2016: Tevi Troy writes:

What better way to greet the most depressing election in my memory than to argue politics with my brother. Even though Gil and I grew up in the same house in Queens, we took different political journeys. He was a Democrat early on—I remember he worked for Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1976 Senate campaign. He even introduced me to Pat one time in Central Park. I am the younger brother and, therefore, more of a child of the 1980s. I volunteered for the Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign and was a summer intern for George Bush’s 1988 campaign.
Even though Gil and I had different journeys, we now share a lot of similarities of approach. We both have Ph.D.s—he went into academia and I did not. In the post-Sept. 11 world, both of us have been disturbed by the Left, especially when it comes to Israel. In his role as columnist for the Jerusalem Post, Gil has written many trenchant pieces criticizing President Barack Obama’s stances on Israel. I was typically more explicit and political in my approach. I supported Mitt Romney in 2012 and was an adviser to the campaign.
Which brings us to 2016. I have opposed Hillary Clinton from a policy perspective for two-and-a-half decades, but her other issues—setting up her own server as secretary of state, having a distant relationship with the truth, and her participation in “the great enrichment” via Clinton, Inc.—make her a complete nonstarter for me. And I was excited to see so many smart young conservative politicians lining up to join the 2016 GOP race. Yet that process brought us Donald Trump as the GOP nominee.
Liberals somehow see Trump as some kind of extreme conservative. I see him as a big-government liberal. He sees government as the solution to our problems, doesn’t want to make any changes to our unsustainable entitlement programs, and he has the AFL-CIO position on trade. That’s not to mention the allegations about his treatment of women, his avoidance of taxes, his nonpayment of debts, and his publicly demonstrated propensity to pick fights with women, POWs, and parents of slain soldiers, as well as elected—and respected—Republicans such as Paul Ryan.
As Gil knows, I usually get a thrill from voting. But this year, it’s more like a kick in the stomach.
Gil Troy responds:

I know my role here. To make things fun, clear, and tweet-worthy, I’m supposed to play the traditional New York Jewish liberal to my brother—actually my two brothers—the renegade New York Jews turned conservative. (Our older brother Dan Troy is a corporate super-lawyer and former Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush official). And perhaps, back in the 1970s and 1980s, when my hero Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a mainstream Democrat, that kind of simplistic political Punch-and-Judy show would have worked. (Tevi’s excellent first book on Intellectuals and the American Presidency has a great Moynihan chapter, showing where our political and intellectual agendas intersect.)
But I’m afraid I have to disappoint. I am too much the academic, too much the moderate, and too disappointed with where the Democratic Party and modern American liberalism have gone, to play the typical liberal.
As an academic who, like Tevi, is often called a “presidential historian” (we professors have to pretend to disdain such simplistic titles), I avoid publicly endorsing any candidates. I am proud when I write something that is praised as balanced, as I just did for Time, pointing out Hillary Clinton’s moral lapses along with the sexism and unreasonable “Clintipathy” that exaggerates her ethical sloppiness into extreme statements about being “the most corrupt candidate ever.” And I am equally proud when I write something historical as I did last week for Politico, tracing the long noble history of Party Bolting, which may have helped some Republicans abandon Donald Trump—without my telling them what to do. My approach to politics is captured in the late former New York Mayor Ed Koch’s great line: “If you agree with me on nine out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.”
My passionately nonpartisan moderation drives Dan and Tevi crazy, when they’re not busy sending each other secret messages with their fancy right-wing decoder rings. Dan even calls me “the smugwump,” a clever update to the nickname given the 19th-century liberal reformers who abandoned the Republican party in 1884 because they couldn’t support the corrupt former senator and former secretary of state (I’m not making this up) James G. Blaine. They were defined by the dismissive line “that a mugwump is a person sitting on the fence, with his mug on one side and his wump on the other.”
Mea culpa. I find the demands of partisan loyalty—and the resulting intellectual inconsistency—in Washington, D.C. suffocating. (Yes, I get it, hence the “smugwump” designation.)
Dan has another great line. He is often asked: “How could you three grow up as the sons of two New York City schoolteachers and none of you are liberal Democrats?” He responds: “How could any thinking being grow up in a union household in New York in the 1970s and still remain a liberal or a Democrat?” We saw Albert Shanker’s liberal UFT (United Federation of Teachers) disappoint my parents repeatedly. We watched New York City turn from a liberal Great Society paradise into a dirty, smelly, crime-ridden, debt-burdened, bureaucratically sclerotic disaster. And we also saw identity politics make too much of the radical Left turn totalitarian, unthinking, more swayed by who you were rather than what you did or thought, truly irrational, illiberal, and yes, anti-Israel.
So, for a change I find myself in the majority today, agreeing with the record levels of Americans who dislike and mistrust both candidates. In 2016, being a smugwump just means you think and care without partisan blinders on. Whereas writing my recent book on The Age of Clinton made me appreciate Bill Clinton’s centrism more, the Clintons’ moral blindspots perennially disappoint me.
But I also criticize Republicans. Extremist dog-whistling on immigration is reprehensible. I didn’t like “Can’t-play-with-anybody-in-the-sandbox” Ted Cruz and “Callow Marco” Rubio as candidates. I detest Donald Trump’s bullying, his contempt for so many, and his assault on our democracy’s very legitimacy with his “rigged election” demagoguery.
So I share Tevi’s concerns and heartbreak. Traditionally, when asked during campaigns, “Who will win?” I dodge, saying: “As a historian, I find it hard enough to predict the past, I can’t begin to predict the future. But,” I add, “on Election Day, Americans will vote peacefully, so, unlike in so many other countries, ballots not bullets will rule.” These days, I only say the first sentence. I mourn that the ugly demons Donald Trump stirred—and the extreme Left’s menacing response—prevents me from giving my usual prediction of a tranquil Election Day and a peaceful power transition.
Beyond being disappointed, I’m scared.
Tevi Troy responds:

This is unusual, but Gil is wrong about one thing: There is no vast right-wing conspiracy decoder ring. Or if there is, I don’t have one, and Dan has not shown me his. And while I know he takes great comfort in his “moderate’s freedom” and the ability to criticize both sides, I think conservatives deserve credit for their willingness to criticize the GOP candidate this cycle at a time when liberals and Democrats too often overlook the flaws of their standard-bearer.
In fact, one of the things that I find most comforting in this election is the degree to which many of the smartest and most able conservative thinkers have been unwilling to get on board with Donald Trump. I don’t see the same degree of self-criticism from the Left. Hillary gets to skate by on her many problematic issues. Even Bernie Sanders, who ran a spirited campaign against her, refused to engage on the email issue when it was clearly an issue on which she was deservedly vulnerable.
I remember in the early 1990s, my late mentor, Ben Wattenberg—an LBJ White House aide and Scoop Jackson Democrat, for the record—used to write that Democrats, when forming a firing squad, do so in a circle. There are no circles on the Democratic firing squads anymore, just a straight line pointing at the GOP. Republicans are the ones who seem to be forming the circles. But when Ben was making his observation following the 1988 election, the Democrats were in the midst of a period of self-criticism. Now Republicans are likely about to enter a similar period of self-reflection, and in that context, a circular firing squad, while ugly, may lead to the re-examination that the party needs in order to right itself, both politically and intellectually.
So while I am dismayed by what’s going on in the current election, and not happy with either of our choices, I do have some faith in the conservative movement’s willingness and ability to have the honest and robust discussions necessary to figure out the way forward. Call this the freedom of members of an intellectual movement rather than party operatives. We are free to think how we like and have no obligation to refrain from criticism of the party.
This vision centered around the freedom to disagree is reminiscent to me of the many robust arguments we had over our Shabbat table growing up. One time I brought home a female friend who left the table crying because she thought we were all yelling at that nice old man who was our grandfather. Well, Grandpa was indeed a nice man, but he also liked a good argument, and he trained his grandsons to follow suit. Perhaps similar training in the crucible of argument at other Shabbat tables is why many conservative Jews have been loud Trump critics.
Going forward, conservatives need to stay true to our principles. One of those principles is freedom. I hope that in the future the Republican Party can find a standard-bearer who celebrates freedom—including the freedom to disagree—and is one who the conservative movement can proudly get behind. This election has not brought it.
***
The final part of this exchange will appear after the election results are in. You can help support Tablet’s unique brand of Jewish journalism. Click here to donate today.
Gil Troy and Tevi Troy both write, teach, and speak about American history and modern Jewish identity. Gil is professor of history at McGill University. His latest book is The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s. Tevi is the former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and White House aide. His latest book is Shall We Wake the President: Two Centuries of Disaster Management from the Oval Office.

UNITED STATES / UNORTHODOX

Super Tuesday
A special Election Day episode featuring ‘Washington Post’ reporter Bob Woodward, ‘National Review’ editor Eliana Johnson, Tablet columnist Jamie Kirchick, and a Democrat in Boca
UNITED STATES
Super Tuesday
A special Election Day episode featuring ‘Washington Post’ reporter Bob Woodward, ‘National Review’ editor Eliana Johnson, Tablet columnist Jamie Kirchick, and a Democrat in Boca by Unorthodox

This week, we’re getting our Unorthodox on early, with a jam-packed special episode for you to listen to while you wait on line to vote.
Our first Jewish guest is Stephanie’s maternal grandfather Albert Rothaus, a retiree who lives in Boca Raton, Florida, with his wife, Cecile. The lifelong Democrat tells us what it’s like being a Hillary supporter in Trumpland, the arguments he hears in favor of Trump, and about putting friendships on ice during the election.
Our second Jewish guest is Tablet columnist and Daily Beast contributor Jamie Kirchick, who tells us which Republicans have most disappointed him the most this election season, the worst thing he’s been called on Twitter, and what it’s like to be a conservative who’s voting for Hillary Clinton.
Our third Jewish guest is Eliana Johnson, National Review’s Washington editor, who tells us what the mood is like in her Washington, D.C. office, why certain Senate races are more important than the presidential election, and why she’s not voting at the top of the ticket.
Our Gentile of the Week is the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, who offers his election predictions, tells us whether he’s ever missed the Nixon administration during this election, and whether he’s sick of the suffix ‘-gate’ being added to every political scandal. Tickets here.
For a final Election Day treat, our editor Noah Levinson has a report from a Melania Trump rally in Philadelphia this weekend, where he asks Jews why they are voting for Trump.
Join us for our next live show in Toronto! We’ll be recording at Beth Tzedec Congregation November 17 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets here.
We love hearing from you! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com with comments or questions, or just to say hi. We may share your note on air.

OBSERVANCE / ADAM KIRSCH
Need a Reason to Hope This Campaign Season? Try the Timeless Talmud.
Can it get any worse? Yes, yes, it can, a lot worse, but the continuity of learning in the ‘Daf Yomi’ cycle has remained unbroken for 2,000 years.
OBSERVANCE
Need a Reason to Hope This Campaign Season? Try the Timeless Talmud.
Can it get any worse? Yes, yes, it can, a lot worse, but the continuity of learning in the ‘Daf Yomi’ cycle has remained unbroken for 2,000 years. by Adam Kirsch
Literary critic Adam Kirsch is reading a page of Talmud a day, along with Jews around the world.
Reading the Talmud over the past week, in the final days of the presidential campaign, has been a strange experience of cognitive dissonance. I can’t escape the feeling that the political future of American Jewry is at stake in today’s election as never before in my lifetime. That is because the Trump campaign has injected an anti-Semitic poison into American politics that I hoped I would never encounter outside of history books. In a deep sense, the very premise of American Judaism—that it is possible to be fully American and fully Jewish at the same time—is being tested. Is this really a time for poring over 1,500-year-old rabbinic debates about the laws of trusteeship?
But then, perhaps this bad time is exactly the right time for Talmud. The Talmud cannot teach us how to resist our enemies—that requires a different kind of knowledge and skill. But there is something reassuring about the very remoteness of the rabbis from contemporary politics, and from politics in general. It has been nearly 2,000 years since Yehuda HaNasi compiled the Mishna, and in that time the Jewish people have been through much worse ordeals than the ones we are facing in America today. Yet the links in the chain of study have never been entirely broken. Judaism has passed through many places and forms, and there is no reason to think that the American phase of the Jewish story will last forever. But the Talmud does last, and by reading it I have the sense of participating in something, if not timeless, then as close to it as human beings can get.
Chapter Three of Tractate Bava Metzia, which Daf Yomi readers finished this week, continues the exposition of Jewish law relating to property disputes. The first two chapters of the tractate dealt with disputes over lost and found property, such as garments, money, or livestock. The third focuses on another kind of dispute, between the owner of a piece of property and the person to whom he has temporarily entrusted it. That person, known as a “bailee,” is obligated under biblical law to return the deposit to its owner upon demand. In an agricultural society without a banking or credit system, this kind of deposit would have been very common and very important. Any time a man had to travel, for instance, he would have to entrust his money to a bailee. If his property took the form of livestock, he would have needed a bailee to feed and care for it in his absence.
But what happens if the property is stolen while in the bailee’s possession? More generally, what standard of care is he obligated to follow in safeguarding the deposit? The biblical rule laid down in Exodus 22 is that if an item is stolen while in the possession of a bailee, he must swear an oath that he no longer has it and did not misappropriate it. If he swears this oath, he does not have to repay the owner for the value of the deposit. But what happens, the Mishna asks in Bava Metzia 33b, if the bailee prefers not to swear this oath and instead agrees to pay the owner the value of the stolen property, and then the thief is caught and the stolen property is recovered? Does the recovered item belong to the original owner, or did the bailee’s payment effectively transfer ownership of the item to him? According to the Mishna, the bailee is entitled to recover the item; what’s more, he is entitled to receive the double payment that is prescribed by law as punishment for theft.
The Gemara goes on to probe this ruling. If a bailee is entitled to receive the double payment, he is effectively making a profit from the item that was deposited with him. But Rabbi Zeira points out that, in general, a bailee is not legally entitled to profits from a deposit: For instance, “the fleece and offspring” of a sheep in a bailee’s custody belong to the original owner, not the bailee. Why should things be different when it comes to the fine for theft? The Gemara argues that the difference has to do with probability. The owner of the sheep anticipates that it will produce fleece and offspring, but he doesn’t anticipate that it will be stolen, and thus indirectly “produce” profit in the form of the double payment for theft.
Just because a bailee is not held liable for the theft of a deposit in his care doesn’t mean that he has no responsibilities toward it. In Bava Metzia 35a, the Gemara speaks of “a certain man [who] deposited jewels with another,” but when he came to ask for the jewels back, the bailee said, “I do not know where I placed them.” Rav Nachman ruled that this constituted negligence, a clear breach of the bailee’s duty, and so he was obligated to repay the value of the jewels. When he refused to do so, the court ordered his house to be sold to raise the money. At this juncture, however, the jewels were recovered, so Nachman ruled that the house should be returned to the bailee and the jewels should go to the original owner.
Rava observes that this does not appear to be consistent with the rule governing stolen property. If the jewels had been stolen and the bailee had paid the owner for them, then when they were recovered they should have become his property. In this case, we learn, the jewels had appreciated in value since they were lost, and so the bailee would actually end up making a profit. Shouldn’t the same principle hold here, in a case of negligence? But when Rava asked Nachman this question, “he did not answer me,” and Rava adds, “and he did well that he did not answer me.” The reason Nachman dismissed the question is that there is no comparison between a case of theft, where the bailee was not responsible for the loss of the deposit, and a case of negligence, where he is responsible. In the latter case, it would clearly be unfair to reward the bailee with a profit for losing the jewels and then obliging the owner to take him to court to recover their value.
The rabbis go on to ask other questions about what constitutes negligence in safeguarding a deposit. Say a man deposits a sheep with a bailee, and the bailee then deposits it with a second bailee, and the sheep dies. Has the first bailee shown negligence? According to Rav, he has not: So long as the second bailee was a “mentally competent person,” the first bailee was acting judiciously in entrusting the sheep to him, and so he met his legal standard of care. But according to Rabbi Yochanan, the first bailee is negligent, because the original owner of the sheep can say to him: “It is not my desire that my deposit be in the possession of another.” In other words, the owner chose the first bailee specifically because he trusted him to take care of the sheep; he might not have trusted the second bailee with that responsibility.
When it comes to coins, the Mishna in Bava Metzia 42a sets out a different standard of care. A bailee entrusted with money cannot “bind it in a cloth and sling it behind him,” because this is not as secure as keeping it in a purse in his pocket. Nor can he entrust the money to his children if they are minors, because they are too young to be legally competent. But it follows from this rule, as the Gemara goes on to observe, that if the children are adults, the bailee can entrust them with the money. There is evidently a difference between giving the money to one’s own adult child and giving it to an unrelated third party. That is because, as Rava says in Bava Metzia 36a, “Anyone who deposits an item with another [does so] with the awareness that at times the bailee’s wife and his children with safeguard it.” A bailee cannot be expected to be constantly in possession of the deposit; as long as it is in his house under the observation of a competent adult, he has fulfilled his obligation.
In the course of this discussion, the rabbis give advice on the best ways of safeguarding money. In Talmudic times, this would have been a matter for constant anxiety; there were no savings banks and no deposit insurance, so you might literally have your life savings in your mattress, and if someone took it, there was no recourse. Indeed, to listen to the rabbis, even your mattress might not be a safe place. Rabbi Yitzchak says: “A person should divide his money into three; he should bury one-third in the ground, and invest one-third in business, and keep one-third in his possession.” But the Gemara goes on to say that “now rummagers are commonplace”—that is, there are thieves who go around digging up buried money. So, too, with money hidden in the beams of a house and between the bricks of a wall—apparently, these hiding places are insecure, because thieves regularly plunder them. The only place safe enough for hiding money, the rabbis conclude, is “in the handbreadth of the wall adjacent to the ground or adjacent to the ceiling.” In such circumstances, anyone might think twice before agreeing to take responsibility for a deposit.
***
To read Tablet’s complete archive of Daf Yomi Talmud study, click here.
Adam Kirsch is the director of the MA program in Jewish Studies at Columbia University and the author, most recently, of The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature.

You Want Mazel Tov Cocktails? We’ve Got Mazel Tov Cocktails.
Wash down the potential horrors of election night with some of these incredible (and untested) drinks. They’re sure to knock the sense out of you.
THE SCROLL
You Want Mazel Tov Cocktails? We’ve Got Mazel Tov Cocktails.
Wash down the potential horrors of election night with some of these incredible (and untested) drinks. They’re sure to knock the sense out of you. by Jonathan Zalman
This, below, is a GIF of a Molotov cocktail being lit at the beginning of a music video for the Jay-Z/Kanye West track, “No Church in the Wild.”

Trump didn’t like the fact that Jay-Z and Beyoncé performed at a recent Hillary Clinton rally, calling their music “lewd” and other comments that were more or less veiled racisms. CNN contributor Scottie Nell Hughes, a Trump supporter, spouted the company line as well, citing the above GIF as evidence of Jay-Z’s anti-police messaging. What followed was yet another Internet-born gift from this election season, which is nothing if not an Internet idiocracy.

Trump’s Final ‘Argument for America’ Ad Is Rife With Anti-Semitic Tropes
A fitting end to an ugly campaign that has given the hateful David Duke a platform
THE SCROLL
Trump’s Final ‘Argument for America’ Ad Is Rife With Anti-Semitic Tropes
A fitting end to an ugly campaign that has given the hateful David Duke a platform by Jonathan Zalman
At the moment, the general sentiment surrounding the election seems not to center on policy, but about what liquor to drink as the results pour in. And I get it. We all get it. It’s been a long, long election cycle, especially for those of us who have a memory of what it is like to be discriminated against, crapped on, othered.
And so it should come as no surprise that Donald Trump’s closing campaign ad once again nurtures the anti-Semitic language and motifs that have been a campaign calling card—and one that has mainstreamed a nasty, aggressive, hateful mind-set. (We’ve covered this bigotry for months in our #TrumpWatch column.) Here it is:
As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo points out, “the four readily identifiable American bad guys in the ad are Hillary Clinton, George Soros (Jewish financier), Janet Yellen (Jewish Fed Chair) and Lloyd Blankfein (Jewish Goldman Sachs CEO).” The messaging of the ad, he argues, is “by design.”
These are standard anti-Semitic themes and storylines, using established anti-Semitic vocabulary lined up with high profile Jews as the only Americans other than Clinton who are apparently relevant to the story… [T]he Jews come up to punctuate specific key phrases. Soros: “those who control the levers of power in Washington”; Yellen “global special interests”; Blankfein “put money into the pockets of handful of large corporations.”
View image on Twitter
✔@ADL_National
This #Trump ad touches on images and rhetoric that anti-Semites have used for ages http://ow.ly/I67p305TZuL
It’s mind-boggling when you compare this video—and other similar Trump ads that tout a highly nationalistic, “take back America” line—to those ads run by David Duke, a former KKK member who has been campaigning for a Louisiana Senate seat on the coattails of Trump.
Here’s example A, with Duke talking after a recent debate about “special interests” and “money,” and on and on, otherwise touching upon a number of Trump’s talking points.
Or example B, with Duke touting an online poll that showed he won the debate in a landslide, and his patrolling of Mexico’s border, before telling viewers to “take America back.”
Or example C, in which Duke talks about how immigrants “will destroy our country,” and how we need to “defend our heritage.” (Trump never goes as far as Duke on the “heritage” front. After all, Duke is a humongous, unabashed racist who says that “European Americans” need someone to stand up for them, since African Americans and Jewish Americans and Mexican Americans already do.) Duke then says, “Vote for Trump for President and David Duke for the U.S Senate.”
Related: Trump Watch [Tablet series]
Jonathan Zalman, a staff editor, runs The Scroll, Tablet's news blog.


Grouplove’s Ryan Rabin Is Living Out His Rock ‘n’ Roll Dreams
The son of a South African Jew who was the former guitarist for Yes, Grouplove’s drummer and in-house producer has hit his stride as the band embarks on a world tour for its third studio album, ‘Big Mess’
THE SCROLL
Grouplove’s Ryan Rabin Is Living Out His Rock ‘n’ Roll Dreams
The son of a South African Jew who was the former guitarist for Yes, Grouplove’s drummer and in-house producer has hit his stride as the band embarks on a world tour for its third studio album, ‘Big Mess' by Daniela Tijerina
The sunlight coming in through the windows of a spacious, 10th-floor corner office at Atlantic Records kept Ryan Rabin perky, and allowed me to see his hazel eyes and a spot of silver hair amid his short black curls, tucked away above his right ear. Underneath his embroidered “Dream Team” cap, Rabin, Grouplove’s 31-year-old drummer and in-house producer, was already sporting a five-o’clock shadow; it was only noon.
On September 9, the day Grouplove’s third studio album dropped, Rabin and his bandmates woke up at 4 a.m. for a sound check at The Today Show—this following a performance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert the night before—and were preparing to perform three other back-to-back shows that same day across New York City. It turned out, this was just a warm-up: Soon, the feel-good pop-rockers would embark on a 29-city North American tour (and a stint in Europe), performing their insightful and equally infectious new record Big Mess. Over the weekend, both of Grouplove’s New York shows sold out.

Trevor Rabin (L) Ryan Rabin at the ASCAP Film & Television Music Awards in Beverly Hills, California, June 28, 2012 (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
When we met in early autumn, Rabin was wearing a navy T-shirt and black jeans, yellow socks (one inside-out), a black-banded watch with an MTV logo on the face, and a gold chain peaking through his collar: This Los Angeles native was appropriately dressed for a hot day in New York. However, in a sense, Rabin’s journey didn’t begin in New York or L.A., but in Johannesburg, South Africa, which is where his musical lineage begins. As a permanent reminder of his roots, Rabin has a tattoo of the South African flag on his right wrist.
Rabin’s father, Trevor Rabin (shortened from Rabinowitz), is former guitarist for the legendary progressive rock group Yes. Trevor’s paternal grandfather was Jewish and a Lithuanian cantor, and his father, Godfrey, was a jazz musician. Trevor grew up in an observant home and his mother converted to Judaism. He married his high school sweetheart Shelley May in 1978, and, with his solo career in flux, they moved from London to California in 1981 and eventually had a son. It’s in L.A. that Trevor became a guitarist for Yes, and in 1983, he penned “Owner of a Lonely Heart” (apparently on the toilet), which became a legendary opening track off the band’s eleventh album, 90215.
Ryan Rabin recalls growing up in “a super hippie-reformed” congregation in L.A., led by a rabbi who “fancied himself a very serious musician.” He would, said Rabin, bust out his guitar at any given time. These memories are almost comical to Rabin, who said he doesn’t consider himself religious at all. “[My rabbi] would make up some melodies that I didn’t know existed in some Torah readings and I was like, ‘Really that kind of sounds more like a folky, kind of, Bob Dylan vibe.” Somehow, I imagine that these early introductions to music, from both his father, with whom he toured with as a young boy, and his eclectic rabbi, have come to shape Rabin’s musical identity.

* * *
Before they were Grouplove, enjoying fruit platters on tour, four of the band’s five members—Rabin, Hannah Hooper (lead vocals), Christian Zucconi (lead guitar, vocals), and Andrew Wessen (guitar)—met at a commune run by Wessen’s brother in Greece. (Bassist Daniel Gleason joined the group later). In 2010, while studying abroad in Prague, Rabin and then-girlfriend, Kyly Zakheim (they married earlier this year in South Africa), flew to Crete for a week and met Hannah and Christian, who had been living at the commune all summer.
Later that year, Rabin invited them to his parent’s home in L.A. to visit. They became fast friends through late night jam sessions but never had any intention of taking it further than that. Using hand-me-down production equipment and instruments in his parent’s garage-turned-home studio, they unknowingly recorded what would become the first Grouplove songs. A few months later their manager, Nicky Berger, heard the recordings and put it in the right hands. “We did something special without even realizing it,” said Rabin.
In 2011, Grouplove released their first studio album, produced by Rabin, called Never Trust A Happy Song. The debut received mixed reviews and ultimately pinned them as a “happy-go-lucky” band singing sun-kissed music. However, despite the surface-level criticism, two singles from the album (“Colours” and “Tongue Tied” experienced commercial success. The world’s first introduction to Grouplove, “Colours,” a hypnotizing rock number, was featured in advertisements for both Apple and Coca-Cola followed by a rendition of the song on Fox’s hit show, Glee. Two years later, after touring the world and making their rounds on the festival circuit, including a spot in the Coachella line-up, Grouplove dropped their second album, Spreading Rumours. This album peaked at #21 on the Billboard 200 chart.

Back at Atlantic Studios, Wessen was signing copies of Big Mess on vinyl. As he stacked the records, the Venice Beach native shook his long, sun-bleached hair in protest: Rabin had begun discussing the genesis of their musical collaboration, which, apparently, signaled impending embarrassment. In high school, around the age of 16, Rabin and Wessen played in a band together at local venues on L.A.’s once acclaimed sunset strip , called The Anthem—a name that, when uttered, for what seems to be the first time in a long time, caused the both of them to cringe in unison.
“You’re killing us—don’t tell her, Ryan,” Wessen demanded.

Rabin and Co. rockin’ out at Forecastle Festival, Louisville, Kentucky, July 15, 2016.“We had one [song] called, ‘Burn Into Ash,’ ” Rabin bashfully recalled. “We also had a song called ‘Be The One,’ ” which Rabin vaguely remembered as a love song.
After an admittedly juvenile go at pop-punk with Wessen, Rabin formed a new band on his own while studying music business at the University of Southern California. This time, according to Rabin, the band had an equally awful name (The Outline), but he had made a more prominent attempt at making a name for himself in the industry. “We thought this was going to be our big break,” said Rabin. Before they knew it, The Outline was signed to Capitol records, giving four students from San Diego State and USC the chance to live out a rock dream.
Or so they thought.
Rabin and his band mates toured in a van, without a crew, over the course of four, painstaking years to non-existent crowds. They were eventually dropped from the label. But, Rabin’s next musical pursuit was just around the corner—or, well, around the globe, waiting for him at a commune in Crete.
* * *
A few years before Grouplove formed, when Rabin was 19, he and two friends, Ben Berger (the brother of Grouplove’s manager) and Ryan McMahon, started a production project called Captain Cuts. Together, the trio write, produce, and perform with artists like American Authors, Walk The Moon, and Halsey, to name a few. This year alone they’ve already picked up two Billboard Music Awards for their work on Walk The Moon’s single “Shut up and Dance.” Before this, they pitched songs to Disney Channel stars like Miley Cyrus.

Grouplove. (Facebook)
Although still producing mostly pop music, Rabin has come a long way from writing teeny-bopper hits (fellow drummer Tré Cool of Green Day is fan of his). His latest production credit is on Grouplove’s very own Big Mess, an eight-month-long endeavor. And even though listeners will still find upbeat tempos and catchy hooks, they’ll also find depth. This album is the result of what Rabin describes as finding controlled inspiration in total chaos. Of the album’s first single, “Welcome To Your Life,” Rabin said, “I actually thought of the chorus in the shower while Hannah was in labor with Willa.” (Hooper, who sports pink hair, and Zucconi, who has blue hair, welcomed a baby girl about a year ago; they’ve all come a long way since Greece.)
With other song titles like “Enlighten Me” and “Do You Love Someone,” Grouplove and Rabin are just trying to make sense of the world around them as they grapple with rising fame, blossoming love, and raising a child in this “big mess.”
In tracks like “Standing in the Sun,” Grouplove acknowledges the doubts they’ve faced in lines like, God says it’s kind of hard to believe him, but redeem their faith on later tracks like “Heart of Mine,” where they affirm: In my life, talkin’ bout all the time, everything feels so right.
After two albums, where the band expressed that they had thought they had it all figured it out, or were trying to figure it out, Big Mess arrives as their happy ending. It’s one that reinforces their identity as a perky indie-band but what this album also does, all at once, is shatter that mold by admitting they haven’t figured it out yet but that it’s going to be OK anyways: The lesson of my life is to never comprehend it, explains Zucconi on “Enlighten Me.”

* * *
Six years later, it’s the day of Grouplove’s third album release and they’re about to play an acoustic show atop a bench in New York’s Washington Square Park. They had announced the show to fans via social media the night before. It was a 90-degree September afternoon and Rabin, now wearing a fresh Simpsons-illustrated Knicks T-shirt, said he’s wasn’t tired. But that might just be the heat making him delirious.
Three songs into their short but sweet set at the park, Hooper and Rabin conduct a poll to decide on a final song. Standing next to Rabin and Wessen, I made an attempt at an Anthem reunion and suggest to the pair that they play “Burn Into Ash.”

Grouplove performing in Washington Square Park, September 9, 2016. (Facebook)
“You’re the worst,” Rabin joked.
“This is all your fault,” Wessen, turning around trying not to laugh, uttered to Rabin.
Instead, the crowd decided on a song called, “Shark Attack,” an infectious pop anthem off their sophomore album, Spreading Rumours. With no time for an encore, one by one, Grouplove hopped off the bench and disappear en route to their next show at Rough Trade Records.
At their third and final show of the day, at Baby’s All Right in Williamsburg, a sign on the wall warned it’s unlawful to hold more than 280 occupants in the venue. But by the feel of it, the warm, beer-drenched space was over capacity. In more ways than one it was starting to very closely resemble Rabin’s bar mitzvah, which Rabin said was the “best party ever.”
The coming-of-age celebration—which was “Club Ryan” themed and took place at a restaurant above the Santa Monica Museum of Flying—also involved bright neon lights, loud music, and dancing teenagers. Baby’s All Right had become Club Ryan 2.0. There was just one small difference. “Ryan’s in his panties!” shouted Hooper, who was fully clothed in a metallic bodysuit.
And she was right. Rabin had stripped down to a pair of bright blue briefs. Seated center stage at his drum kit, he was drenched in sweat, wagging his tongue and whipping his hair back and forth. Song after song, Rabin maintained this same energy and the audience, who were singing—no, shouting—the lyrics to Grouplove classics and even to songs released that same day, fed off of it feverishly. With every beat that Rabin slammed down, the audience banged their heads forward in approval.
“Everyone thinks we’re this happy band from California but we’re really just trying to be optimistic in a world that’s hard,” said Hooper to the crowd. “And if that means we’re fucking happy then I guess we are.”
Even from the back of the venue, you could see Rabin’s grin reflecting against a flashing green light. Rabin couldn’t be having more fun than he is now. He probably wouldn’t sleep that night, but who needs sleep when you’re living out your dreams.
Daniela is a journalist based in Brooklyn, originally from Texas. You can follow her on Instagramif you like.

-------
How history will judge Paul Ryan; presidential Gil and Tevi Troy on the election; transgender inclusion in the Jewish community; more from Tablet Magazine "Trump’s views on Israel"


Monday, November 7, 2016
The Devil and Paul Ryan
PAUL BERMAN
America’s soul, and his own, at stake
UNITED STATES
The Devil and Paul Ryan
America’s soul, and his own, at stake by Paul Berman
What will the historians say, when the time comes for them to draw up their judgments? I think their eyes will alight upon Paul D. Ryan, currently second in line for the presidency, after Joe Biden, and they will declare that, in the election of 2016, Ryan was truly the odious figure, he above all others. About Ryan, you cannot say that he is merely a 12-year-old, incapable of taking responsibility for his own actions, which distinguishes him from his party’s candidate. Nor can Ryan be regarded in the same simple light as the candidate’s leading supporters and surrogates, Gingrich, Giuliani, and Christie. Those people, the henchmen, have merely been faithful to their own inner natures—ambitious and mad, in Gingrich’s case; ambitious and sinister, in the case of Giuliani and Christie.
Ryan, though, has been presented to us for many years as a thoughtful man. He is even said to be a man of ideas: a disciple of Milton Friedman and, in his youth, of Ayn Rand, who matured sufficiently to prefer Aquinas. He wrote speeches for Jack Kemp. The burnish of intellect is upon him, if only in a speechwriter’s version. And Ryan has been presented to us as the incarnation of the small-town dream, in its Republican version, than which nothing is dreamier—Janesville, Wisconsin’s leading citizen, the impeccable family man and humble congregant. When Ryan poses for his photo-ops in front of wooden porches, dressed in crisp shirtsleeves and blue jeans and gazing with frank democratic ease at the camera, you are meant to think that here is the authentic descendant of Lincoln and Reagan, the sons of Illinois, even if Reagan moved to Hollywood. And the authentic descendant has made a point of displaying his ruminative sobriety.
In the early stages of the campaign, he plainly understood that something appalling was happening to the Republican Party, and he responded with a multiphase show of hesitation—his delayed and slightly tortured endorsement of the candidate in the columns of the Janesville Gazette, his dis-invitation of the candidate to a Wisconsin political fair, his announcement that he would not be campaigning for the candidate, and finally his announcement that he has already voted for the candidate, which was a way of signaling that everyone else in the Republican Party ought to overcome their own small-town and virtuous revulsion and vote likewise.
In this extended fashion, Ryan has shown us that he knows; and he doesn’t care. He knows that he has called upon people to vote for everything that he is against. Sometimes he has even specified what he is against. It was Ryan who uttered the denuncation, “a textbook definition of a racist comment.” The descendant of Lincoln called for Republicans to vote for the author of the racist comment, even so. Then again, Ryan called for Republicans to vote for the opposite of Reagan’s greatest legacy, too. The Republican candidate is, after all, the only philo-czarist to run for president on a major party ticket in the history of the United States. But there is no point in tabulating the many ways in which the Republican candidate represents a rupture in the American political tradition.
It is true that Ryan did all of this in the hope of executing a complicated pool shot. He resembles in this respect David Cameron, the former prime minister of Britain, who, in order to outmaneuver his rival Boris Johnson, called for the Brexit referendum, fully expecting the referendum to fail, and for Johnson to suffer the consequences. Cameron is, for this reason, the most odious man in Europe, the man who gambled the stability of the West and the prospects of his own country for the pettiest of purposes. In Ryan’s case, he has hoped that by calling for Republicans to stand by their candidate he will preserve his party’s unity and strength, and, after the candidate’s defeat, he will resume the leadership. And if the candidate is not defeated? Ryan, like Cameron, has preferred not to stare into that abyss.
Being the Janesville man of thoughtful mien, Ryan is, of course, not enjoying himself, the way that Giuliani is enjoying himself. He knows what Mitt Romney must think of him, and what the Bush family must think of him, and what the ghosts of Lincoln and Reagan must think. He knows that he has been through a terrible battle of God and Satan, and he has emerged on the side of one and not the other. He knows that if anyone could have ensured the candidate’s defeat in the general election, he is that person, or is one of a small group who could have done it. He knows every last thing. Every molecule of his body is an eyeball, and all of the eyeballs are gazing downward (if I may borrow from Emerson). But here is the odious quality precisely. Odiousness requires self-knowledge.
***
To read more of Paul Berman’s political and cultural analyses in Tablet magazine, click here.
Paul Berman writes about politics and literature for various magazines. He is the author of A Tale of Two Utopias, Terror and Liberalism, Power and the Idealists, and The Flight of the Intellectuals.
UNITED STATES / GIL TROY AND TEVI TROY
The Troy Brothers Bemoan the Election (An Epistolary Bromance)
Part Two: Two Queens boys turned presidential historians on opposite sides of America’s great political divide, on Comey, the criminalization of politics, and contested elections
UNITED STATES
The Troy Brothers Bemoan the Election (An Epistolary Bromance)
[Updated] Part Four: Two Queens boys turned presidential historians on opposite sides of America’s great political divide, on the power of political slogans, American optimism, and the ‘national stress test’ that was this campaign by Gil Troy and Tevi Troy
This is part 4 of an exchange between Tevi Troy and his brother Gil Troy about the 2016 presidential election. Here’s part 1 (Friday, Nov. 4), part 2 (Monday, Nov. 7), and part 3 (Tuesday, Nov. 8), all below. The conversation will end here tomorrow after results of the election are in.
***
Nov. 8, 2016: Gil Troy writes:

I love a great political slogan. The Revolutionaries’ “Don’t Tread on Me,” expressed Americans’ desire for independence and dignity. “Fifty-four forty or fight” in 1844 drew a clear line in the sand about American intentions in the Oregon territories. U.S. Grant’s 1864 “Vote as you shot” crudely distinguished between Southern traitors and Northern patriots. Herbert Hoover’s “A Chicken in Every Pot” conveyed the great optimism of the 1920s that prosperity would never end. Franklin Roosevelt’s double whammy, promising “Happy Days are Here Again,” if Americans accepted his “New Deal,” offered reassurance and reforms when Hoover’s prosperity ran out of chickens. Bill Clinton’s 1992 slogan “The New Covenant,” while it didn’t quite resonate, conveyed a sense of seriousness, his desire to be seen as “Putting People First” and to forge what he eventually, called, more memorably “The Third Way,” triangulating between Big Government liberalism and “Government is the problem not the solution” Reaganite conservatism. Even Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can,” while somewhat trite, inspired people, empowering the once powerless, capturing the historic nature of his quest to be the first African-American president.
Against that historic background, the emptiness of the 2016 election was captured in the vapidity of the two rivals’ slogans. In fairness, on one level Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton hands down in the slogan war. Wherever I went, when I would say, even to pro-Clinton crowds, “Donald Trump promises to make America…” they would shout, lustily, “GREAT AGAIN.” And when I added, and “Hillary Clinton promises….” there was often awkward silence—and then, in one high school, great laughter and applause that they had been played. Admittedly, after the Democratic Convention some would mumble “Stronger Together”—which sounds vaguely Stalinistic to me, or “I’m with her”—which evokes “I’m with stupid.”
The meaninglessness of Clinton’s slogans conveyed the void at the heart of her campaign, and her vision for America. Walter Mondale-style, she reached out to various interest groups, wooing women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, immigrants, LGBTs, Jews, many of whom were motivated by their fear of Trump. But her campaign was so defensive, so fearful of offending these groups she was courting, so concerned with maintaining her lead, that she didn’t offer a lyrical, inspiring, vision that could pass what I call the “Richard Stands Test,” the schoolkid’s misstatement of the Pledge of Allegiance line, “for which it stands.”
Being tolerant and inclusive, while noble, is a foreign policy not a national mission statement. Hillary Clinton’s campaign validated (what I called last time) America’s wonderful, welcoming, pluralistic Republic of Everything but did little to build a Republic of Something, to create a new consensus, that both creates a new national vision rooted in the past while looking toward the future, and offers any kind of diagnosis and cure for the fundamental ailments that are so clearly afflicting the United States: a deindustrializing economy that isn’t creating enough middle class jobs; a coarsening culture that is creating legions of the walking wounded lacking discipline, purpose, hope; a fragmenting society that is losing its sense of community; and a polarizing politics that has politicians boasting about the gridlock they will deliver because their hatred of the rival party is trumping their love of America and commitment to governance. Moreover, she offered no promise of retreating from Barack Obama’s assault on the pride, the celebration of American values, the refusal to cower or, yes, apologize, that has always been at the heart of American exceptionalism.
Being tolerant and inclusive, while noble, is a foreign policy not a national mission statement.
Now, give Trump and his slogan some credit. “Make America Great Again,” evokes nostalgia for the old Republic of Something. Trump recognizes the serious breakdowns in our economy, culture, society, and politics. His campaign was buoyed by many of the same frustrations that lifted the Bernie Sanders campaign from punchline to powerhouse—although both of them used “Free Trade” and “Wall Street” as scapegoats that miss the real economic problem. The great mass middle class civilization that emerged after World War II enabled autoworkers and longshoremen to earn enough to have savings; today’s economy of part-time WalMart workers and minimum wage earners in automated factories produces the dislocation and frustration that has fueled this campaign—but not been addressed.
Unfortunately, Trump’s demagogic technique of divide and conquer, his campaign to be the plutocratic king of white male America not the increasingly multicultural United States of America, his lack of experience, discipline, consistency, substance, makes him the tribune of The Republic of Nothing, a nation of New Nihilists, who will say anything, believe in nothing, and do what pleases them when it pleases them because they lack any core ideals, any true authorities, any traditional anchors. Coming from the world of Reality TV—which is fake—running a campaign of 140-character insults and postures, offered a dystopic model not of an improved reality but of a coarsened, vulgar, abusive America.
To the extent that a campaign is a national stress test, America failed—and has become a laughingstock worldwide, no longer inspiring oppressed peoples with this exercise in popular participation but inviting mockery with this plunge into idiocy and unreason.
In a long, brutal history of American elections, this electoral season—and the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump campaigns—will have a special place in the Hall of Shame, among the worst, the most bruising, divisive, demoralizing. But all is not lost—yet. The John Kennedy transition in 1960, the Ronald Reagan transition in 1980, showed that candidates can evolve over three months from won-by-a-whisker damaged winners to confident presidents with a mandate. In a land where history is last week’s most forwarded YouTube video of cats playing or babies drooling, memories are short and malleable. And in a nation that still represents the great ideals of liberty, democracy, and equality, the possibilities of redemption remain, like prosperity in yet another slogan, just around the corner.
Tevi Troy responds:

It’s hard to disagree with anything in your last missive, so I will pick up where you left off. It is true that this has been an exceedingly dismal campaign, and as we have made clear throughout this exchange, neither of us is very happy about it—nor is the country.
But despite the disappointment of this campaign, I believe that there is a reason for hope. First, the unpopularity of both candidates does suggest that most Americans think there is indeed something very wrong with this election, and with the candidates. Both of them won their respective nominations more for structural reasons and flaws in the selection process then for any compelling narrative about a hopeful America that they were trying to convey.
So the candidates are on the debit side, but I would put American institutions and the American people on the asset side of the ledger. American institutions are strong enough to withstand the poor policies of either candidate, and strong enough to resist excessive power grabs by officials who don’t respect democratic norms or the rule of law.
As Gil put it, we remain “a nation that still represents the great ideals of liberty, democracy, and equality.” One bad election will not take that away. I recognize that this may seem overly optimistic. In fact, one piece of feedback we have both received from a mutual friend is that we are excessively optimistic. (We can’t help it: it’s the Troy way.) This particular friend thought that my hope for an American exceptionalism agenda on the part of the Jewish organizations was a naïve one. I didn’t put that thought out there believing that those organizations would embrace this perspective immediately, but part of the role of we historian-commentators is that we put ideas out there in the hopes that smart people will read them and take us up on them. And there I think is the promise of America. We still have free-speech; we still have strong voices out there expressing every different perspective; and we still have hopes for a better tomorrow, whatever our actual tomorrow informs us happens on this Election Day.
***
Nov. 7, 2016: Gil Troy writes:

I just completed a four-city, one-week speaking tour. The whole country, from North to South, right to left, Jewish and non-Jewish, seems to be suffering from PTSD: Pre-Trump-Clinton-Election Stress Disorder. Amid all this uncertainty, I am willing to predict that the next president will have a Jewish son-in-law, and despite the anxiety, let’s emphasize one bit of good news: The next president will support Israel more enthusiastically—and hopefully more effectively—than the incumbent.
God bless America! In Europe, too many campaigns historically pivoted around the question of who bashed the Jews the most. How wonderful that in the United States, both candidates vie to prove who is more “pro-Israel.” That competition reinforces the broad, left-to-right American consensus that has supported Israel enthusiastically for decades—and, despite our worries, is at a historic peak. That competition stems from the fact that in an ugly world of ISIS and Assad, of Islamicist terrorism and Middle East instability, an anti-Israel president would be anti-American too, overlooking America’s one stable democratic ally in that crazy, critical region. And that competition demonstrates that America’s traditional bipartisan support for Israel is good for America, not just Israel: Healthy democracies need some issues, like supporting Israel, on which both rival parties agree.
I’m not naïve. I understand that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump probably would express their support for Israel in different ways, although I also know that a candidate’s promises are not binding, especially regarding foreign policy. Barack Obama was sure in 2008 that he was going to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, which remains open. I also don’t think he ever imagined—nor did we—that he would kill as many terrorists by drone as he has.
Still, the differences in Clinton’s and Trump’s respective Israel approaches merit debate. Beyond proclaiming the most embarrassing foreign-policy credential—evah—that he was grand marshal of the Israel Day Parade—Trump has alternated between the passionately pro-Netanyahu “Israel right or wrong” school, promising no daylight between the two countries, and the more neutral “let’s make a deal” school, assuming some great deal-maker can impose the right borders on the squabbling partners.
Clinton in her career has vacillated. She started out closer to the “tough love” school President Obama (and the Israeli left) embrace—assuming Big Daddy America must force misbehaving Israel to compromise and stop beating up those nice, disenfranchised Palestinians. As New York senator, she reflected her husband Bill’s “love-love” school, understanding that if Israel feels supported by the United States and respected internationally, it’s more likely to compromise. And, as secretary of state, she was yet another “Peace Processor,” one of those perennially (Shimon) Peres-ian, Sisyphean optimists, who since the 1990s have been negotiating away, again and again and again, without asking why the Oslo peace process failed and what new understandings of reality (and of the Palestinian refusal to accept reality) are required.
In an ideal world, we would have had a mature, substantive, respectful debate in the Jewish community and beyond about which of these five approaches to take. In an even more ideal world, that debate would have taken us to the philosophical assumptions underlying each candidate’s foreign policy. Obama’s years in office have shaken Americans’ traditional faith in American exceptionalism. Both the humiliation imposed on us by Americans being kidnapped, beheaded, and blown up—as well as President Obama’s distaste for America’s traditional self-confidence and sense of national virtue—have many Americans doubting our competence and steadiness abroad, let alone American exceptionalism.
As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton’s celebration of American values—particularly her role modeling for women—expressed more faith in America’s special heritage to the world than the president did. Donald Trump’s “great again” talk more crudely expresses a nostalgia for that sense of self-confidence—and that mix of post-WWII power and righteousness with which he grew up. My gut tells me that if the candidates did ever speak in such sophisticated, theoretical terms, Hillary Clinton would park more of her support for Israel in shared values, Donald Trump would park it in the realm of mutual national interests reinforced by admiration for Israel’s chutzpah and strength.
Alas, such heady but important discussions have not even engaged the foreign policy wonk-etariat. Instead, in this electoral race to the bottom, what I have most heard in the Jewish community this week is that “Hillary’s a crook and she’s anti-Israel like Obama” or that “Trump’s a monster and he lies about Israel like he lies about everything else.” What I learn from this is: We must stop using the phrase “anti-Israel” about anyone unless that person truly rejects Israel’s right to exist, and that, whoever wins on Tuesday, we have a lot of healing and rebuilding of trust to do—in the Jewish community and in the good ole’ U.S. of A.
Tevi Troy responds:

Thanks for the note, and safe travels. I was glad I got to see you—briefly—on this trip. I regret the geographic distance between us makes our in-person interactions more limited than I—or our dear mother—would like. As you know, her favorite word is “togetha.”
You have previously mentioned to me your concerns about American society and the apparent worsening of such divisions in recent years. I wonder if a presidential election brings out these divisions and things will calm down once the election is over. This does not mean that either presidential candidate will miraculously become popular—or even bearable—post-election, but that people will move on and live their lives once the worst of the election divisions are over.
The excessive rhetoric of campaign season points to another problem, though. I recall that during the 2012 election, people on the left were saying the worst things about Mitt Romney. Ads claimed he fired someone whose spouse then died of cancer, as if he were responsible for the death. Joe Biden told a black audience that Republicans were going to “put y’all back in chains,” which was one of the more disgraceful comments we have heard from a sitting vice president. Then after the election, Romney suddenly became that nice guy who pumped his own gas and went to Disneyland.
Romney is not the only one to get that treatment. John McCain and George W. Bush were subjected to hysterical attacks as if they were all somehow completely outside of the mainstream of American politics. Charlie Cooke had a good piece on this recently, and Jonah Goldberg made a similar point back in July. The excessive rhetoric deployed against previous Republican candidates blunts the potency of similar attacks against Trump. Even some liberals acknowledge this. Bill Maher recently said that Romney, Bush, and McCain “were honorable men who we disagreed with and we should have kept it that way. So we cried wolf, and that was wrong.”
As for the Jewish in-laws, I am not sure that I would take too much comfort there. After all, Hillary’s Jewish adviser, Sidney Blumenthal, sends her missives from his anti-Israel son Max (Gil, can I use the “anti-Israel” designation for Max?) Should I somehow take comfort that both Blumenthals are Jewish? And as for Hillary’s back-and-forth career on Israel, I fear that both her foreign-policy and political advisers will pose a real problem for Israel should she be elected. Campaign manager Robby Mook even told Clinton not to speak about Israel in front of a group of Democratic activists because Israel is presumably so unpopular in those circles.
This does not mean that I pin my hopes on the fact that Ivanka converted to Judaism, or—as Gil points out—that Trump was grand marshal of the Salute to Israel parade. I am, however, generally more comfortable with the Republican position on Israel and on Republican foreign-policy advisers on the subject of Israel. This does not make me pro-Trump, but it does mean that I see it as important that the Republicans retain both the House and Senate, so that they could be a check on the Israel-criticizing tendencies of the Clinton-Obama foreign-policy team. (See, I am already being more careful with the “anti-Israel” term. Perhaps Gil’s admonition will catch on, at least in the Troy family. Sigh.)
While I appreciate and share your hope that both parties in America staunchly support Israel, I see worrisome signs that the parties are diverging on this issue, with the GOP clearly being the more supportive party. And given that you and your family live in Israel, you will feel the results of this election more acutely than I will.
So I join you in hoping that “Love-Love” Hillary emerges; should she win, I fear that we will end up with what you generously called “Tough Love” Hillary. And the “Tough” tends to take precedence over the “Love.”
Gil Troy responds:

Thanks for your concerns. Yes, it was fun seeing you and introducing you to a new kosher restaurant, I assumed you had tried every one of them in New York by now.
The growing polarization—and estrangement—in America does worry me. Although you and I could have a fun presidential-historian-nerd duel citing examples of nastiness in previous campaigns with the intensity that you and your son Ezzie fenced by exchanging the names of obscure baseball Hall of Famers when he was 5(!), something feels different. I think of the campaign as a national stress test checking our national health, and often highlighting underlying problems. You’ve repeatedly heard my riff from my Age of Clinton book that we were once a Republic of Something, united by core consensus ideals, and this new Republic of Everything—and Nothing—of ours—is more welcoming but also deeply nihilistic, selfish, tunnel-visioned, lost.
And, yes, you’re right, Max Blumenthal qualifies as anti-Israel, given his loathsome, amoral, ahistorical, disproportionate comparisons between Palestinian cities and Nazi concentration camps. He proves why we shouldn’t use the “anti-Israel” charge too broadly. We need to keep it as a term of opprobrium for hateful extremists like him—otherwise we Jews are also crying wolf.
And, yes, I worry that some of Hillary Clinton advisers, while not “anti-Israel” like Blumenthal, are Bash-Israel-firsters, while others are those sapped, now-wearisome, peace-processing dinosaurs still preaching from a 1990s hymnal, still overlooking Palestinian rejectionism and terrorism.
Some leading Democrat must pull a William F. Buckley. Just as Buckley, America’s leading conservative, called out Pat Buchanan in the early 1990s, saying such anti-Zionism masking anti-Semitism did not belong in the Republican Party, I challenge Barack Obama when he retires to echo Buckley, reading out the genuine haters from the Democratic coalition (note this is an invitation, not a prediction).
But these worries about Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are balanced out by seeing the Love-Lovers like Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton’s own leaked intentions to set a different, more constructive, tone with Israel than Obama has. Moreover, I have no idea what Donald Trump would do regarding Israel because I have no idea what this political novice would do regarding anything. He has no political track record—and serious impulse-control problems. Just because a bunch of Orthodox Jewish lawyers on his payroll whose kids study in the West Bank tell him to be pro-Bibi doesn’t guarantee that those sentiments would survive a Trumpian temper tantrum if Netanyahu treated a President Trump as he has treated President Obama.
Your lovely hope—which I share—“that people will move on and live their lives once the worst of the election divisions are over”—is imperiled by this blustering, ungracious candidate who vowed to challenge the legitimacy of American democracy by calling the election “rigged” if the American people dare reject him. This unprecedented assault on the process by a major-party nominee represents a characteristic Trumpian irresponsibility that is far more dangerous—to the United States, and by extension to its allies, including Israel—than the bleatings of little Maxie Blumenthal.
Tevi Troy responds:

Here is potentially something that could bring Jews together over the next four, eight, or even 12 years and beyond. Jews recognize how important American exceptionalism has been for Israel, for the Jewish people in America, and also for the world at large. Even if we as a community have many disagreements on a whole host of domestic and foreign-policy issues, there is–I think—a shared belief in the importance of America as a nation that both protects the Jews but also advances basic ideals about human rights, democracy, and freedom. This could be an agenda item for the wide swath of Jewish organizations that overpopulate Washington: Promote America as a force for good, regardless of who wins the election, and press the incoming administration to make sure it is pursuing that goal. Pursuing this agenda could lead to positive policy responses from the new administration, but it could also help determine the shape of the foreign-policy debate so that we get more acceptable foreign-policy candidates in the year 2020.
***
Nov. 6, 2012 Tevi Troy writes:

When the details about the James Comey investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails came out this summer, it seemed like they treated Clinton with kid gloves, handing out a number of immunity deals that normally would not be given and not getting her on record under oath at the start. At the time, Comey was lauded as the greatest lawman since Elliot Ness. Now, when he has come forward and said that they are still investigating and that there is this new trove of emails, he is just this terrible partisan.
It seems to me that the Department of Justice is typically fairly aggressive in prosecuting people for these kinds of crimes. Scooter Libby was prosecuted as a result of an investigation about something that it is clear he did not do—leak Valerie Plame’s name to Robert Novak. Dinesh D’Souza was clearly guilty of illegal campaign contributions, but the prison sentence seemed out of whack with what should have been punished with a fine. And Obama’s Affordable Care Act wouldn’t have passed without an extra Democratic senator elected in the wake of a wrongheaded investigation of GOP Sen. Ted Stevens that cost him his Senate seat. I am generally uncomfortable with overly aggressive Department of Justice prosecutions, but if they are going to be engaging in that kind of activity, it is only fair to treat both parties the same way.
What does this all mean for our election? When people start to question the legitimacy in the fairness of government, it erodes the basic building blocks of civil society. I do have a real fear that post-election we could have a significant number of people saying that whichever candidate wins is illegitimate. This would be unfortunate. We have a mostly successful 200-plus-year experiment in a democratic republic, a nation that has given great opportunities to the people who live here but has also been a beacon of hope to the world. I would hope that one election with two awful candidates would not threaten that larger enterprise. Such a result would be a tragedy for this nation, and for the world as a whole.
Gil Troy responds:

Hi—so, here’s where you start seeing a difference in our perspectives. First, if I were to write about the Justice Department and its prosecutorial approach, I would instinctively find examples from both sides of the aisle. Your litany of Republican woes, without saying so exactly, implies partisan bias, just as the Clintons during the 1990s could only see how Republicans criminalized politics by targeting Democrats.
Since Watergate, even though political corruption is down dramatically from the bad old days of the 1950s and 1960s, let alone the 19th century, prosecutions for political corruption are up. The good news: less tolerance for behavior that was once normalized. The bad news: the criminalization of politics that has hurt Democrats and Republicans alike.
Second, when the director of the FBI spent 14-and-a-half minutes berating a leading presidential candidate, and 30 seconds explaining that he nevertheless didn’t think her missteps were convictable and thus they were not prosecutable, I was inspired. I thought that was a great lesson in law and civics, that all elements of wrongdoing don’t necessarily justify prosecution in a system that convicts only based on guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.” At the same time, I was appalled by the bad judgment Hillary Clinton demonstrated [in choosing to use a private server] and was reminded that, as in the 1990s, the Clintons always used “not prosecutable” as some kind of absolution. “Not prosecutable or convictable,” is not the standard of behavior by which I live or you live or we wish our kids to live—and it is not to me an acceptable standard of behavior for a future president.
And finally, your analysis ends in a kind of sanitized way. When you write, “When people start to question the legitimacy in the fairness of government, it erodes the basic building blocks of civil society,” I wonder, “what people?” This year, it isn’t just a generalized phenomenon. This is a problem that started, in many ways, with Donald Trump’s reprehensible comment about “the rigged election.” And I can’t help wondering that if your seeking refuge into worries about “people” reflects a kind of instinctive protectiveness toward the Republican nominee—even if you dislike him.
More broadly, of course, I agree with you. The polls showing that since the 1950s, faith in government, in Congress, in the presidency, has been plummeting does suggest the crisis of legitimacy about which you spoke. But in this campaign cycle, Donald Trump has been the major cause of those doubts and, on this one, Hillary Clinton shoulders far less blame.
Tevi Troy responds:

I know I’ll get another crack on Tuesday, but your missive warrants a brief response. I’m happy to list some overly aggressive investigations of Democrats, including those of John Edwards for doing something sordid but not illegal and Sen. Bob Menendez for doing legislative outreach on behalf of a donor that did not seem to be out of the ordinary. The criminalization of political differences leads to careers being ruined and a loss of faith in the system. And on the loss-of-faith point, Trump was wrong to suggest he wouldn’t accept the results of the election. Period. But there were plenty of Democrats questioning the legitimacy of George W. Bush after the 2000 election. And John Kerry waited an inappropriately long time before conceding the 2004 election. Kerry now claims that he was some kind of hero for conceding, but the story at the time was that he had to be pushed into doing so by the late Ted Kennedy.
Every election cycle, we hear people threatening to leave the country if their candidate loses. I wish all those who made such threats would follow through with them and not let the door hit them on the way out. Hysterical and dire warnings about the death of the republic based on the results of a particular election are bad for the country and bad for democracy. If Gil wants to see that belief as some kind of secret sympathy for Trump, he is welcome to.
***
Nov. 3, 2016: Tevi Troy writes:

What better way to greet the most depressing election in my memory than to argue politics with my brother. Even though Gil and I grew up in the same house in Queens, we took different political journeys. He was a Democrat early on—I remember he worked for Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1976 Senate campaign. He even introduced me to Pat one time in Central Park. I am the younger brother and, therefore, more of a child of the 1980s. I volunteered for the Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign and was a summer intern for George Bush’s 1988 campaign.
Even though Gil and I had different journeys, we now share a lot of similarities of approach. We both have Ph.D.s—he went into academia and I did not. In the post-Sept. 11 world, both of us have been disturbed by the Left, especially when it comes to Israel. In his role as columnist for the Jerusalem Post, Gil has written many trenchant pieces criticizing President Barack Obama’s stances on Israel. I was typically more explicit and political in my approach. I supported Mitt Romney in 2012 and was an adviser to the campaign.
Which brings us to 2016. I have opposed Hillary Clinton from a policy perspective for two-and-a-half decades, but her other issues—setting up her own server as secretary of state, having a distant relationship with the truth, and her participation in “the great enrichment” via Clinton, Inc.—make her a complete nonstarter for me. And I was excited to see so many smart young conservative politicians lining up to join the 2016 GOP race. Yet that process brought us Donald Trump as the GOP nominee.
Liberals somehow see Trump as some kind of extreme conservative. I see him as a big-government liberal. He sees government as the solution to our problems, doesn’t want to make any changes to our unsustainable entitlement programs, and he has the AFL-CIO position on trade. That’s not to mention the allegations about his treatment of women, his avoidance of taxes, his nonpayment of debts, and his publicly demonstrated propensity to pick fights with women, POWs, and parents of slain soldiers, as well as elected—and respected—Republicans such as Paul Ryan.
As Gil knows, I usually get a thrill from voting. But this year, it’s more like a kick in the stomach.
Gil Troy responds:

I know my role here. To make things fun, clear, and tweet-worthy, I’m supposed to play the traditional New York Jewish liberal to my brother—actually my two brothers—the renegade New York Jews turned conservative. (Our older brother Dan Troy is a corporate super-lawyer and former Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush official). And perhaps, back in the 1970s and 1980s, when my hero Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a mainstream Democrat, that kind of simplistic political Punch-and-Judy show would have worked. (Tevi’s excellent first book on Intellectuals and the American Presidency has a great Moynihan chapter, showing where our political and intellectual agendas intersect.)
But I’m afraid I have to disappoint. I am too much the academic, too much the moderate, and too disappointed with where the Democratic Party and modern American liberalism have gone, to play the typical liberal.
As an academic who, like Tevi, is often called a “presidential historian” (we professors have to pretend to disdain such simplistic titles), I avoid publicly endorsing any candidates. I am proud when I write something that is praised as balanced, as I just did for Time, pointing out Hillary Clinton’s moral lapses along with the sexism and unreasonable “Clintipathy” that exaggerates her ethical sloppiness into extreme statements about being “the most corrupt candidate ever.” And I am equally proud when I write something historical as I did last week for Politico, tracing the long noble history of Party Bolting, which may have helped some Republicans abandon Donald Trump—without my telling them what to do. My approach to politics is captured in the late former New York Mayor Ed Koch’s great line: “If you agree with me on nine out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.”
My passionately nonpartisan moderation drives Dan and Tevi crazy, when they’re not busy sending each other secret messages with their fancy right-wing decoder rings. Dan even calls me “the smugwump,” a clever update to the nickname given the 19th-century liberal reformers who abandoned the Republican party in 1884 because they couldn’t support the corrupt former senator and former secretary of state (I’m not making this up) James G. Blaine. They were defined by the dismissive line “that a mugwump is a person sitting on the fence, with his mug on one side and his wump on the other.”
Mea culpa. I find the demands of partisan loyalty—and the resulting intellectual inconsistency—in Washington, D.C. suffocating. (Yes, I get it, hence the “smugwump” designation.)
Dan has another great line. He is often asked: “How could you three grow up as the sons of two New York City schoolteachers and none of you are liberal Democrats?” He responds: “How could any thinking being grow up in a union household in New York in the 1970s and still remain a liberal or a Democrat?” We saw Albert Shanker’s liberal UFT (United Federation of Teachers) disappoint my parents repeatedly. We watched New York City turn from a liberal Great Society paradise into a dirty, smelly, crime-ridden, debt-burdened, bureaucratically sclerotic disaster. And we also saw identity politics make too much of the radical Left turn totalitarian, unthinking, more swayed by who you were rather than what you did or thought, truly irrational, illiberal, and yes, anti-Israel.
So, for a change I find myself in the majority today, agreeing with the record levels of Americans who dislike and mistrust both candidates. In 2016, being a smugwump just means you think and care without partisan blinders on. Whereas writing my recent book on The Age of Clinton made me appreciate Bill Clinton’s centrism more, the Clintons’ moral blindspots perennially disappoint me.
But I also criticize Republicans. Extremist dog-whistling on immigration is reprehensible. I didn’t like “Can’t-play-with-anybody-in-the-sandbox” Ted Cruz and “Callow Marco” Rubio as candidates. I detest Donald Trump’s bullying, his contempt for so many, and his assault on our democracy’s very legitimacy with his “rigged election” demagoguery.
So I share Tevi’s concerns and heartbreak. Traditionally, when asked during campaigns, “Who will win?” I dodge, saying: “As a historian, I find it hard enough to predict the past, I can’t begin to predict the future. But,” I add, “on Election Day, Americans will vote peacefully, so, unlike in so many other countries, ballots not bullets will rule.” These days, I only say the first sentence. I mourn that the ugly demons Donald Trump stirred—and the extreme Left’s menacing response—prevents me from giving my usual prediction of a tranquil Election Day and a peaceful power transition.
Beyond being disappointed, I’m scared.
Tevi Troy responds:

This is unusual, but Gil is wrong about one thing: There is no vast right-wing conspiracy decoder ring. Or if there is, I don’t have one, and Dan has not shown me his. And while I know he takes great comfort in his “moderate’s freedom” and the ability to criticize both sides, I think conservatives deserve credit for their willingness to criticize the GOP candidate this cycle at a time when liberals and Democrats too often overlook the flaws of their standard-bearer.
In fact, one of the things that I find most comforting in this election is the degree to which many of the smartest and most able conservative thinkers have been unwilling to get on board with Donald Trump. I don’t see the same degree of self-criticism from the Left. Hillary gets to skate by on her many problematic issues. Even Bernie Sanders, who ran a spirited campaign against her, refused to engage on the email issue when it was clearly an issue on which she was deservedly vulnerable.
I remember in the early 1990s, my late mentor, Ben Wattenberg—an LBJ White House aide and Scoop Jackson Democrat, for the record—used to write that Democrats, when forming a firing squad, do so in a circle. There are no circles on the Democratic firing squads anymore, just a straight line pointing at the GOP. Republicans are the ones who seem to be forming the circles. But when Ben was making his observation following the 1988 election, the Democrats were in the midst of a period of self-criticism. Now Republicans are likely about to enter a similar period of self-reflection, and in that context, a circular firing squad, while ugly, may lead to the re-examination that the party needs in order to right itself, both politically and intellectually.
So while I am dismayed by what’s going on in the current election, and not happy with either of our choices, I do have some faith in the conservative movement’s willingness and ability to have the honest and robust discussions necessary to figure out the way forward. Call this the freedom of members of an intellectual movement rather than party operatives. We are free to think how we like and have no obligation to refrain from criticism of the party.
This vision centered around the freedom to disagree is reminiscent to me of the many robust arguments we had over our Shabbat table growing up. One time I brought home a female friend who left the table crying because she thought we were all yelling at that nice old man who was our grandfather. Well, Grandpa was indeed a nice man, but he also liked a good argument, and he trained his grandsons to follow suit. Perhaps similar training in the crucible of argument at other Shabbat tables is why many conservative Jews have been loud Trump critics.
Going forward, conservatives need to stay true to our principles. One of those principles is freedom. I hope that in the future the Republican Party can find a standard-bearer who celebrates freedom—including the freedom to disagree—and is one who the conservative movement can proudly get behind. This election has not brought it.
***
The final part of this exchange will appear after the election results are in. You can help support Tablet’s unique brand of Jewish journalism. Click here to donate today.
Gil Troy and Tevi Troy both write, teach, and speak about American history and modern Jewish identity. Gil is professor of history at McGill University. His latest book is The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s. Tevi is the former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and White House aide. His latest book is Shall We Wake the President: Two Centuries of Disaster Management from the Oval Office.

The Chosen Ones: An Interview With Joy Ladin
The writer and scholar on transgender issues in the Orthodox community, inclusion, and why Yom Kippur is her favorite Jewish holiday
THE SCROLL
The Chosen Ones: An Interview With Joy Ladin
The writer and scholar on transgender issues in the Orthodox community, inclusion, and why Yom Kippur is her favorite Jewish holiday by Periel Aschenbrand
The Chosen Ones is a weekly column by author and comedian Periel Aschenbrand, who interviews Jews doing fabulous things.
Joy Ladin is fancy.
She is the author of eight books, a finalist for both a National Jewish Book Award and a Lambda Literary Award, she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts and a Hadassah Brandeis Institute Research fellowship. She holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from Princeton University, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Massachusetts, and a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. Since 2003, she has held the David and Ruth Gottesman Chair in English at Stern College of Yeshiva University. She has received a Fulbright and given a Tedx talk. Oh, and she’s also the first openly transgender professor at an Orthodox university.
Being a pioneer is by definition, not an easy job. And the Jews are a tough crowd—we’re anxiety ridden and nervous and, as a rule, we don’t love change, I think, because we’re always worried it’s just one more step back to the gas chamber. It’s not totally unwarranted fear, given our history, but what about when it’s the other way around? What about when it’s within our group that we need to be accepting and open-minded to things that make us uncomfortable, or are foreign to us?
Since November is transgender awareness month, I decided to reach out to Ladin—to discuss all of the above, and more.
Periel Aschenbrand: I would love for you to tell me about all the things the Jews are doing wrong. And also to tell you how wonderful it is to meet you and I think that what you’re doing is amazing.
Joy Ladin: Thank you. I like this premise but—
PA: It’s a long list, I’m sure. We’ll be here all night.
JL: I’m going to let Yom Kippur stand in for the long list of the things the Jews are doing wrong but I suspect you’re wondering about Jews and trans Jews.
PA: Yes.
JL: One thing I’ve noticed is that Jewish communities’ relation to gender, and whether they have a sense of gender that either tolerates or includes people who are not just male or female, is not a religious thing so much as a social thing. The Orthodox communities have a religious commitment to the gender binary. I actually know of an email discussion list of Orthodox trans Jews and so, informally, under the radar, there are a number of Orthodox communities that have trans members and those trans members are known to the local rabbis and sometimes to other members of the congregation and some of the rabbis even give the trans members Halakhic guidance. This is unprecedented, they teach them how to fulfill the mitzvot and it seems that most common formula is because of the principle of not disturbing the worship work of the community. So in public, you have to fulfill the mitzvot that go with your gender presentation but because Orthodox Judaism doesn’t really acknowledge such a thing as gender apart from sex, in private they say that G0d considers you, still, to be the sex that you were born as and so you have to observe those mitzvot when you’re in private.
PA: That’s very problematic.
JL: It is. But look at from another angle. They have invented non-binary gender, that is a form of gender that is neither male nor female, it has an idea of gender as performance. It’s like, how do you take a binary and performative idea of gender and mesh them together? That’s what they did in coming up with that. And what it really does is to try to use the language of binary gender to accommodate people who don’t fit it.
PA: But that’s very problematic.
JL: Well, yeah. It’s awful. It doesn’t identify people who don’t identify as male or female and it can be horrible for the people involved. But if you compare it to what you would imagine—I mean, you looked very surprised when I said there were trans Jews in the Orthodox communities.
PA: I’m not surprised that there are trans Jews living in Orthodox communities, I’m very surprised that there are trans Jews being embraced in Orthodox communities and who are allowed to be themselves. Which it sounds like they’re not, exactly.
JL: Well, yes and no. In private, nobody is monitoring you. They say halachically, in public, you are required to act as the gender you transitioned to.
PA: Well that’s a good thing.
JL: I think this is cutting edge.
PA: Yes, that’s amazing. And what about little kids?
JL: In secular society, we value newness so much that we even pretend that old things are new because we are only interested in new things. So you’ll see, every few years, something about the new monogamy or the new dating or the new kissing even though these things have been going on forever. But you can’t sell magazines by saying “people still date” so you put “new” on top of it. In traditional communities, it works exactly the opposite way, something being new is not good. So you pretend that new things are old. And as you accept them, you reframe them in ways that are traditional.
PA: I was intrigued to find out that there are these words—tumtum (a gender identity where a person’s sex characteristics are indeterminate or obscured) and ay’lonit (a person who is identified as “female” at birth but develops “male” characteristics at puberty and is infertile), and androgynous (a person who has both “male” and “female” sexual characteristics)—that go back to the Mishnah and the Talmud.
JL: It’s something that will be important to the Orthodox when they get around to accepting that tradition has always been something that has accommodated this. At the moment, it’s more important to trans Orthodox Jewish scholars who are looking for places in tradition. Those words are about bodies not about gender.
PA: OK, but trans people have been around since the beginning of time.
JL: But when we talk about trans people, we’re not talking about bodies, we’re talking about self-definition. What the rabbis were talking about was bodies. They’re not talking about how these people see themselves. For all we know, these people see themselves as either male or female or they see themselves as something else. I don’t know, maybe the rabbis didn’t care. There is no concept in Jewish tradition as “gender as apart from sex,” so it’s all reduced to sex.
PA: Just in Orthodox, you mean? In secular Judaism, certainly there is.
JL: That’s right. But in traditional Jewish texts, going back to the Torah and the Talmud, nobody talks about people whose bodies are one way and their understanding of themselves is another way. This is important because it recognizes that contrary to the way that people usually read Genesis. Humans beings are not just created male and female in the physical sense, but there are other ways a body can be and that the rabbis responded to that in the way these Orthodox rabbis are privately responding to trans Jews. Instead of saying, “You don’t fit the male/female thing, you can’t be part of the Jewish community”—they didn’t say that—they took the binary language of male and female and they stitched them together to fit this non-binary.
PA: And that’s the case now, too? So you’re saying there are places in Borough Park and God knows where else—say, in Monsey and Beit Shemesh—where they are embracing and allowing kids and adults to be themselves?
JL: I’m not aware of that. What we’re talking about is the religious, ideological approach to Judaism but what you just said has more to do with the social part of it.
PA: The religious, ideological part is important and interesting, but the thing that I am most interested in and, frankly, concerned about is how that translates to real people’s real lives, in Orthodox and secular Judaism. I want my son to be able to grow up in a world where people are allowed to be who they are. To say nothing of the physical danger and psychological trauma of it. As a Jew, and probably pretty obviously not a very religious one, I feel like this is something that is really important. And I’ve never heard it addressed in any reform or conservative synagogues. I certainly haven’t heard it talked about in Orthodox synagogues, not that I’ve spent very much time there.
JL: I’m glad you’re upset by it.
PA: I am upset by it!
JL: Most of it is not different for Jews than it is for anybody else so when I go around the world to most places, including very progressive places, it is just assumed without thinking that everybody is either male or female. When 90-plus percent of people are something, we always round up to a hundred, which is not true; there is rarely 100% of anything. But in the vast majority of communities, the vast majorities of people fit into these male and female categories. Most people find a way to do that because the social penalty is so strong. What that means is that communities don’t have any provisions for people who don’t fit into those categories. And Jewish communities are like that also. And that includes Reconstructionist communities, who have changed their welcome statements but haven’t actually thought about what it would be like to have a trans person.
PA: But most communities don’t show off about how important community is. That’s one of the things that is inherent in what we preach, as Jews—family, this, family that, community this, that, the other thing. This is, culturally, a very Jewish thing. I’m not saying that is totally specific to us and not important to other groups of people and that their cultures don’t espouse those views as well, but this is a very Jewish thing.
JL: Right. There is a Jewish commitment to community but what most of us mean—
PA: Is a community of people who are exactly the same as we are?
JL: That’s right. Or, what we we really mean is an accepted range of variation. Different communities have different ranges of variations. So when people traditionally think about community, they think about homogeneity, about people who are bonded together based on what they in common. It’s a newfangled concept to say, actually, community is aspirational.
PA: Yes!
JL: It’s like democracy.
PA: Yes! Yes! That’s what I’m talking about.
JL: So this is non-traditional. When you say, “Jews have a commitment to community,” you’re doing a little bit of a bait and switch here, because Jews have a commitment to a traditional idea of community.
PA: So it’s bullshit.
JL: It’s both. I don’t know that I’ve been in a Jewish community that has said there are Jews we don’t want in principle. But in practice, we’re just not making things easy for certain kinds of people. So we know the people we know and we deal with the variations within the people we consider ‘us’ and if you don’t fit ‘us’ then we don’t really deal with you. That’s the norm. That’s the background. But against that background, the interesting thing is the number of Jewish communities that have been trying to move to a different idea of community with regard to gender. So you have the movements that are not Orthodox that have made various degrees of policy change as movements. Of course, Jewish communities are not centralized, we’re not the Catholic Church so nobody really cares when the Conservative movement decides this, but it does represent that a group of people have been thinking about it. And they do want to include people who are not simply male or female and at policy level. People have done different degrees of thinking about it.
I just talked today to a rabbi—Rabbi Len Sharzer at The Jewish Theological Seminary—who is trying to change policy for trans people and trying to make provisions for nonbinary people.
PA: Good for him!
JL: He was a plastic surgeon before he was a rabbi.
PA: Of course he was.
JL: So he has a unique skill set in thinking about this.
PA: And he can give you a good nose job.
JL: Yes, that’s right.
PA: That’s very impressive. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Not the nose job part, the policy part.
JL: It is. So he’s not trans but he has these two commitments. One the one hand, he’s committed to conservative Judaism and on the other hand, he is committed to the idea that trans Jews are still Jews should have a place in the conservative community, which doesn’t mean let’s not beat them up and drive them out. It means we have to meet their needs and anticipate their needs.
PA: That’s right. We do.
JL: What do we do when they want to get married? What do we do when they want to use the mikvah? So that is a lot of thinking. Particularly, if you think of it terms of Jewish tradition and how everything works.
PA: I read about Trans Torah, which has all kinds of support for trans and genderqueer Jews, to help them claim their heritage, even blessings for transitioning and chest binding. This is so wonderful and so important. Is that what Rabbi Sharzer is doing?
JL: He is working on a very long document regarding policy that has to go to a committee and be presented to larger and larger groups. So somebody has to do the work of figuring it all out. It is unusual that somebody does that. What he’s doing is not something you’re seeing in other places.
PA: And how are they at the university? I don’t have to write about this if you don’t want. I know that unlike me, you have a real job.
JL: The university is at the same place that a lot of people are. When I was growing up, in Rochester, NY, there was a lot of stuff about race and tolerance. And there was a binary. You were either tolerant or you were not tolerant and the ideal was to be tolerant. Now that I’m a visible minority, I’m like, so how does this tolerance thing work and what is it? I’ve realized that there is a spectrum of responses that communities have to difference. At one end is genocide: if it’s different in this way, wipe it out. And we’re experienced with this both on the receiving end but also on the delivering end, like the Malachites. What?I You left the women and children? So, that’s one end of the spectrum.
At the other end of the spectrum is full inclusion, which is what you see with something like eye color. And between these two, there are a lot of different degrees. It’s better to say, “Kick them out,” that’s better than genocide. It’s better to say, “Harass them and abuse them but don’t kick them out.” That’s still moving towardinclusion. It’s like, we hate you and we’re going to make your lives miserable for being different but we’re not getting rid of you. Then, you move toward the middle and you get something like tolerance. It’s like saying. “You’re different in a way we don’t really understand and we’re not comfortable with, but we’re not going to do anything to you.” And the deal with tolerance is you can be here as long as we don’t have to think about or talk about your difference. The attitude of the dominant group is: you’re here. Problem solved. So you’re here. We’re not going to kill you, we’re not going to kick you out, but we also don’t really want to deal with you. We don’t want to think about you and we particularly don’t want to think about you in ways that make us rethink ourselves.
PA: Exactly.
JL: So that’s the tolerance I was taught to aspire to and that’s pretty much my situation. Individuals are different but the institution as a whole can’t say they are delighted to have gender diversity.
PA: Why can’t they say that?
JL: You can’t say the word transgender.
PA: Why not?!
JL: What I’ve learned about tolerance, is that it leads to denial. Because the premise of tolerance is that if you’re here and we’re not doing anything to you then the problem is solved. And we know that’s not true. That’s the beginning of the problem but that’s not the end of it and that’s when denial sets in and people get very upset when you puncture their denial.
PA: That’s enraging. And look, I’m not saying we haven’t come a long way, but we obviously have a long way to go.
JL: I agree. It’s a community by community thing. There are a lot of resources in Northen California but a lot of Jewish communities have other problems, too. They’re shrinking, they’re aging, they have an influx of young kids and they don’t have a good Hebrew School.
PA: That’s a big one, I’m sure. Let me ask you this: What’s been the most surprising wonderful thing you’ve discovered since coming out as trans?
JL: I’ve been blown away by how many Jewish communities have embraced me, having grown up the way that I grew up. I was born in 1961 in Rochester, NY, and I lived in hiding, in terror that anyone would find out that I was trans. I didn’t think there were other people like me and I wasn’t sure I was a person, and I was really isolated, and I was afraid and I did not think there could be any Jews or any Jewish community who could accept me for who I was. And tolerance was beyond my imagination, but the idea that there would be communities that would value hearing what I had to say was something I couldn’t even see in science fiction.
PA: Did you ever tell your family?
JL: No. No.
PA: You never told anyone?
JL: As I entered adolescence I tried to find a counselor, but nobody knew anything.
PA: The Internet’s been amazing, huh?
JL: It has. And there has been a lot of education from my perspective from where I have started. There are still a lot of places around the world that are exactly the same as it was where I grew up. They can’t imagine people who are not male or female. It’s not that they are hating people, but it’s that they can’t imagine it. Like in the Orthodox Jewish world, there is a fairly developed homophobia for gay men, there is a much less developed hatred of lesbians because people think about it a lot less. And nobody thinks about trans people enough to hate us.
PA: Oh, that’s just great.
JL: My assumption about the Jewish world was that no one like me is conceivable or could possibly be tolerated, much less valued, included or loved. So coming from that place, the life I’m living now is an unending series of miracles. The Jewish Book Council has been wonderful and I love that institution. Keshet works for ongoing inclusion and I know a lot of communities that I do a lot of different things so from my perspective, that is unimaginably good.
PA: Well that’s very nice to hear. We’ll end on a high note and I’m going to barrel through these next few questions. What’s your favorite drink?
Jl: I’m going to have to say coffee, if you want to just know what keeps me alive.
PA: How do you eat your eggs?
JL: Scrambled.
PA: How do you drink your coffee?
JL: Black and with as little interference as possible.
PA: What’s your favorite Jewish Holiday?
JL: Yom Kippur.
PA: Why?
JL: I really love the intensity of reflection and the intimacy with God. A holiday when you’re supposed to feel God looking at you is pretty great.
PA: Did you have a bar or bat mitzvah?
JL: I did.
PA: What did you wear?
JL: Damned if I know. I didn’t pay attention to anything I wore. I used to get dressed in the dark.
PA: Oh, that’s awful… What shampoo do you use?
JL: Whatever will keep my color from fading.
PA: Gefilte fish or lox?
JL: I hate cold fish. Which in my family basically disqualified you from being a Jew.
PA: Five things in your bag right now?
JL: Wallet, cell phone, vitamin C drops, a little notebook for writing poetry… there is tons of stuff in here. Oh, a nametag from the Lamda Literary Awards.
PA: Favorite pair of shoes?
JL: The ones that don’t hurt when I wear them.
PA: Who makes your necklace?
JL: I make my necklaces!
PA: It’s beautiful. So what’s your favorite thing to wear, now?
JL: My favorite outfit now is some combination of knee-length or longer skirt, black boots, a top with something going on with the neck, and a necklace, in greens, blues, and/or blacks. This shows you how limited my remedial fashion development has been!
PA: I think you look perfect!
Previous: The Chosen Ones: An Interview With Deborah Lipstadt
A Jewish Reading Guide for Pride Month
Related: Gender Through a Jewish Lens
Vox Vault: Her Body, Her Self
Periel Aschenbrand, a comedian at heart, is the author of On My Knees: A Memoir and The Only Bush I Trust Is My Own.
Can Trump’s Newly Released Statement on Israel Woo Voters in Must-Win Swing States?
A look into a statement published by Trump’s advisory committee: on Israel-Palestine, student groups, the Iran Deal, and more
THE SCROLL
Can Trump’s Newly Released Statement on Israel Woo Voters in Must-Win Swing States?
A look into a statement published by Trump’s advisory committee: on Israel-Palestine, student groups, the Iran Deal, and more by Armin Rosen
Just a week before Election Day, and after an estimated 22 million people had already voted, voters finally a have a clearer idea of Donald Trump’s stances on Israel. On Nov. 1, David M. Friedman and Jason Greenblatt, the lawyers who head the Republican candidate’s Israel advisory committee, published a “joint statement” that provides some important insights into how Trump views this ever-vexing corner of the world.
In some respects, Trump’s stance on U.S. policy towards Israel is predictably Trumpian. For instance, the authors note: “While other nations have required U.S. troops to defend them, Israelis have always defended their own country by themselves and only ask for military equipment assistance and diplomatic support to do so.” But this is the document’s only nod towards Trumpian America Firstism, and it includes plenty of red meat for mainline pro-Israel types who might be still be deciding who to support.
As president, Trump would move the embassy to Jerusalem, and “give support [to Israel] greater than that provided” under the recently-signed 10-year Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel. A President Trump would cut off U.S. funding to the one-sidedly anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council, and he considers the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction movement to be “inherently anti-Semitic.” Trump wouldn’t support an Israeli-Palestinian agreement that results in a Palestinian state free of Jewish inhabitants. And Trump’s Justice Department would look into “coordinated attempts on college campuses to intimidate students who support Israel.”
I asked David Friedman by email whether that would entail federal investigations of student groups, like Students for Justice in Palestine, or inquiries that could determine whether harassment of students could jeopardize educational institutions’ tax status and eligibility to receive federal funding. “Yes to all potential targets and remedies identified,” Friedman wrote, “and potentially others.”
The statement isn’t universally hawkish. The Republican party platform was notably agnostic on whether the party still backs a two-state outcome in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Friedman and Greenblatt’s statement still “support[s] direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians without preconditions,” and says that Trump would “seek to assist the Israelis and the Palestinians in reaching a comprehensive and lasting peace, to be freely and fairly negotiated between those living in the region.”
The biggest deviation from the Republican party line comes in the statement’s implication that the Iran nuclear deal will survive in its current form under a President Trump: “The US must counteract Iran’s ongoing violations of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action regarding Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons and their noncompliance with past and present sanctions,” the statement reads.
Because the nuclear accord is structured as an executive agreement between the U.S. president and the office’s Iranian counterparts, any president has the legal authority to annul the deal whenever they want to. According to the statement, Trump wouldn’t exercise that option as president. When reached for comment, David Friedman clarified that Trump does not intend to trash the Iran deal when he gets to the White House. “The Iran deal was a terrible mistake which has placed the world at grave risk,” Friedman wrote by email. “However, we have now released the funds to, and lifted the sanctions on, Iran, so the primary consequence of ‘ripping up the deal’ is to shorten even further the nuclear runway.” At the same time, Friedman didn’t rule out additional nuclear-related sanctions on Iran, even with the agreement still in place. “Assuming (a big assumption) that Iran is in compliance with the JCPOA and otherwise not threatening the US or its allies, we believe the Trump administration will use this period to engage with world leaders to re-introduce economic leverage on Iran and seek to eliminate the Iran nuclear program well in advance of the current 9-year runway.”
There’s a certain contradiction in this stance. Iran is already dissatisfied with the pace of sanctions relief under the JCPOA. New sanctions—especially ones that are explicitly related to a nuclear issue that diplomacy has supposedly already settled—would likely result in Tehran’s own abrogation of the agreement. Trump wants something stronger than the JCPOA, but doesn’t want to be the one to abrogate the deal himself.
There’s a larger tension at work in the document as well: Just how serious is Trump about any of the policies in his advisers’ statement? It’s hard to question either Friedman or Greenblatt’s sincerity: Both appear genuinely concerned for Israel’s well-being, and Friedman runs a number of philanthropic programs in the country (while also serving as the head of the American Friends of Bet El, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank that is unlikely to remain under Israeli control in the event of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement). It’s the candidate they speak for who remains something of a mystery, even at this late stage. Trump seems as changeable and unpredictable as he was when he advocated for U.S. “neutrality” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last year.
The statement is nevertheless clarifying, if only because the pro-Israel right’s organizational apparatus has been notably absent from the election. In 2012, the Emergency Committee for Israel, the Republican-leaning pressure group founded by the Weekly Standard’s William Kristol, filed 11 Form 5 independent expenditure reports with the Federal Election Commission on behalf of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign or in opposition to Obama’s reelection bid, reporting ad buys totaling over $250,000. (A Form 5 is the FEC’s standard disclosure for public affairs committees that spend money in order to influence the outcome of the election). Kristol is a vocal member of the Never Trump faction, and according to the FEC’s publicly available data, his group hasn’t filed a single Form 5 in connection to the 2016 presidential campaign. Jewish donors have largely sat out the campaign as well, with 81 percent of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s board opting not to donate to Trump.
Of course, it isn’t pro-Israel activists or organizers in Washington that the Trump campaign most needs to convince. The audience for this statement is more likely to be Florida’s roughly 600,000 Jewish voters who could prove decisive on election day. A late August poll found that 26 percent of Florida’s Jewish voters plan on supporting Trump, which would constitute some 150,000 votes or more. A second poll of Florida’s Jews conducted in September by the Mellman Group, a Democratic-linked firm, found her losing ground. The Trump campaign might think that highlighting its often-hawkish Israel policies could narrow their margins in a must-win swing state where they’ve consistently been polling within the margin of error. The American votes cast in the Jewish state itself have been similarly close: According to Politico, a poll conducted by iVote Israel found that Trump had defeated Clinton 49 percent to 44 percent among Israel-based voters.
Related:Trump’s Jews
Armin Rosen is a New York-based writer. He has written for The Atlantic, City Journal, andWorld Affairs Journal, and was recently a senior reporter for Business Insider.
Mila Kunis Draws Her Line in the Sexist Hollywood Sand
The actress has published a scathing letter in response to an unnamed producer who told her she’d ‘never work in this town again’ after she refused to pose semi-naked for a magazine
THE SCROLL
Mila Kunis Draws Her Line in the Sexist Hollywood Sand
The actress has published a scathing letter in response to an unnamed producer who told her she’d ‘never work in this town again’ after she refused to pose semi-naked for a magazine by Rachel Shukert
If anything good has come out of the Stephen King-esque endurance contest of horror that has been 2016, it’s the exciting, slightly giddy sense that women have just had it. After centuries of being underpaid, unappreciated, disrespected, screwed over, put in our place, treated like objects, underestimated, taken for granted, sexually assaulted, and generally expected to smile politely while being treated like utter crap, we’re just done. Beyoncé smashed the windshield in the Lemonade video; college-educated female voters will likely doom the electoral prospects of an unreconstructed sexist and admitted sexual predator seeking the world’s most powerful public office. Our time—HER time—is hopefully now.
And the latest powerful, fed-up woman to come forward to say she’s mad as hell and she’s not going to take it anymore is Mila Kunis. On Wednesday she published a scathing open letter on her husband Ashton Kutcher’s website A Plus, attacking an unnamed male producer who told her she’d “never work in this town again” after she refused to pose semi-naked on the cover of a men’s magazine to promote a film. She also takes to task another producer who touted her as “soon-to-be Ashton’s wife and baby momma” as the main reason for the appeal of a shared project, reducing her from an accomplished actress in her own right to the accessory—and brood mare—of a successful man. In so doing, Kunis eloquently takes apart the devil’s bargain that characterizes so many women’s careers in Hollywood: “It’s what we are conditioned to believe — that if we speak up, our livelihoods will be threatened; that standing our ground will lead to our demise. We don’t want to be kicked out of the sandbox for being a ‘bitch.’ So we compromise our integrity for the sake of maintaining status quo and hope that change is coming.”
To put it simply, it’s hard for anyone to make a career in Hollywood, and for women, the difficulty is compounded: How do you get ahead while staying true to yourself? How much garbage and B.S. and the sexually charged innuendo and unwanted touching and sexist undermining do you have to swallow just for the sake of a career you’ve put everything into?
For Kunis, the answer is none. Good for her.
With one letter, she may not quite have joined the pantheon of great Jewish feminists like Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Susan Brownmiller, and Shulamith Firestone, (the fact that so many Jewish women have been on the forefront of the feminist movement is a topic for exploration another time), but she’s fighting back in her own way. And the fact that Kunis—the kind of girl who earlier in her career posed on the cover of men’s mags—is proof positive of Gloria Steinem’s famous maxim that women get more radical as they get older.
Mila Kunis may not transform Hollywood on her own, but the sea change reflected in her statements will. The world can’t function without women. If we stop taking it, sooner or later people are going to have to stop dishing it out. And that’ll be quite a day.
Related: The Feminist Manifesto
Rachel Shukert, a Tablet Magazine columnist on pop culture, is the author of the memoirs Have You No Shame? and Everything Is Going To Be Great. Starstruck, the first in a series of three novels, is new from Random House. Her Twitter feed is @rachelshukert.
-------
Free event: Unorthodox LIVE in Toronto on November 17! from Tablet Magazine of New York, New York, United States "Come hang out with us IRL in the T Dot!" 
Calling all Jews, gentiles, and Leafs fans residing in the Great(er) Toronto Area!
Join us on November 17 at 7:30pm at Beth Tzedec for a live recording of our Unorthodox podcast with two very special guests: writer David Bezmozgis, and mezzo-soprano, actress, and broadcaster Julie Nesrallah.
The event is free and open to the public, but please do RSVP here to reserve your seat. We'll also be posting updates on the Facebook event page—invite your friends and post your questions and comments there! If there's a topic you'd like us to discuss, we're taking requests.
ICYMI, Unorthodox is our newest podcast—a smart, fresh, fun take on Jewish news and culture posted every Thursday. Hosted by Tablet editor-at-large and Los Angeles Times columnist Mark Oppenheimer, and featuring deputy editor Stephanie Butnick and senior writer Liel Leibovitz, the panel discusses the latest Jewish news, politics, and culture with equal parts seriousness and irreverence. From Amy Schumer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the presidential debates to Drake, no topic is off limits.
-------
Hollywood’s first Holocaust movie; Trump supporters lack character; an Orthodox feminist takes off her hat; more from Tablet Magazine of New York, New York, United States "A teenage Orthodox powerlifter on the big screen"


ADVERTISEMENT

Sunday, November 6, 2016
‘None Shall Escape,’ Hollywood’s First Holocaust Film, Was All But Unknown for 70 Years. Now It’s Been Rediscovered.
THOMAS DOHERTY
The 99-year-old actress who played the tragic heroine recalls the bravery and foresight of the screenwriters and producers of an unflinching, prescient B-movie Nazi noir, now deservedly back in circulation in a new 35mm print
Part prophecy, part educated guess, None Shall Escape is a one-of-a-kind film: the only wartime Hollywood production to depict what would later be called the Holocaust—a flash-forward to an unimaginable event somehow imagined on a backlot at Columbia Pictures in 1943. Viewed today, the machine-gun slaughter of a group of Polish Jews being rounded up for deportation and herded into boxcars plays as docudrama. In its time, it must have seemed wild fantasy or jingoistic propaganda.
Unavailable on (legal) DVD, seldom screened on the repertory circuit, and cropping up only sporadically on TCM, a serviceable 35mm print of None Shall Escape is now in circulation. It played in May at the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival and will be shown tonight, Nov. 1, at the Wasserman Cinematheque at Brandeis University. The 35mm screenings are prelude to a full-on restoration for Home Entertainment release and on DCP for wider theatrical exposure by Sony Pictures.
Directed by Hungarian émigré Andre DeToth, shot by ace cinematographer Lee Garmes, and scripted by Lester Cole from an original story by Joseph Than and Alfred Neumann, None Shall Escape was an ambitious, albeit low-budget, project from the often B-movie-class specialists at Columbia Pictures. After a couple of title changes (in preproduction the film was called The Day Will Come, and then Lebensraum), the studio settled on None Shall Escape, a callback to a promise made by FDR to bring Nazi war criminals to justice.
Shot and edited from Aug. 31 to Oct. 26, 1943 (not until June 6, 1944 would the Allies storm the beaches at Normandy), the film looks forward to a postwar reckoning in which a United Nations-like Tribunal sits in judgment of a Nazi war criminal whose twisted course is traced in flashback from 1919 onward. “The time of our story is the future,” reads an introductory scroll. “The war is over. As was promised, the criminals of this war have been taken back to the scenes of their crimes for trial. In fact, as our leaders promised”—and here the screen devotes full frame to the boldfaced imperative—“None Shall Escape.”
***
Three witnesses, all aged and beaten-down survivors of Nazi-occupied Europe—a village priest, the defendant’s brother, and his former fiancé—unreel the life of a brutal SS officer whose story stands for the descent of a nation into savagery from civilization.
Wilhelm Grimm (Alexander Knox, in his screen debut), a German teacher in a folksy Polish village, returns after four years in the trenches of the Great War. He has come back a changed man, physically (lost leg) and psychologically (embittered, already infected with a toxic poison born of defeat). He spews venom at the doltish Polish peasantry, a breed inferior to the glorious Aryan. Understandably, the attitude alienates the affections of his Polish fiancée Marja (Marsha Hunt), who breaks off their engagement. Because he can, Grimm seduces a smitten schoolgirl who, disgraced, commits suicide. Despised by the village, he turns to two men of the cloth—a Catholic priest (Henry Travers) and a Jewish rabbi (Richard Hale)—to lend him money so he can flee to his native Germany.

(IMDb)
In Munich, a new philosophy and a new leader offer an outlet for Grimm’s sadistic streak. Already an Alter Kämpfer, he participates in the Beer Hall Putsch and serves time in Landsberg Prison with the man writing Mein Kampfin the cell directly above his. Grimm’s ruthless will to power is rewarded with quick promotion in the Nazi hierarchy and the attendant perquisites of power. He does not hesitate to consign his brother, a liberal journalist for a socialist newspaper, to a concentration camp, or to indoctrinate his nephew into the black arts of Nazism.
In 1939, when the Nazis invade Poland, Grimm is appointed Reichskommissar of the town he fled from in disgrace. With his Nazified nephew as right-hand man, he orchestrates a campaign of vengeance and oppression. The girls of the town are taken to the “officers’ clubhouse”—code for brothel—“for recreational purposes.” The Jews are beaten and rounded up for deportation.
Shot in noirish night-for-night photography, the deportation sequence shows the Jews of the village, and a shipment from Warsaw, being herded into box cars for transport to what can only be a death, not concentration, camp; the wails of the terrified victims ring out on the soundtrack. Grimm orders the rabbi to quiet his people, but the man has no intention of facilitating the Nazi depredations. Richard Hale, the actor who plays the rabbi, would later accrue countless credits as a character actor in film and television, but he never again commanded a moment so powerfully as in this, his first screen role. Framed in close-up, with minimal cutaways, he delivers a searing indictment of anti-Semitism—and a rousing call to arms:
My people! Be calm. Listen to me.
Let’s prepare ourselves to face the supreme moment in our lives. This is our last chance. It doesn’t matter if it’s long or short. For centuries we have sought only peace. We have submitted to many degradations believing that we will achieve justice, for a reason. We have tried to take our place honestly and decently alongside all mankind to help make a better world, a world in which all men would live as free neighbors. We had hoped, and prayed. But now we see that hope was not enough. What good has it done to submit? Submission brought us rare moments in history when we were tolerated.
Hale spits out the next words:
Tolerated! Is there any greater degradation than to be tolerated? To be permitted to exist? We have submitted too long. If we want equality and justice we must take our place alongside all other oppressed peoples, regardless of race or religion. Their fight is ours. Ours is theirs.
The actor pauses a beat:
We haven’t much time left. By our actions we will be remembered. This is our last free choice. Our moment in history. And I say to you let us choose to fight! Here! Now!
The Jews run from the box cars and attack their guards, but the cause is hopeless: In an extended and excruciating bloodbath, the rebels are mowed down by Nazi machine guns. After the massacre, the unbowed rabbi tells Grimm, “We will never die—it will be you, all of you!”
Grimm shoots him point blank in the stomach, but the rabbi is a hard man to kill. As the camera scans the bodies strewn on the ground and in the boxcars, he stands up and recites kadish over his people.
This being classical Hollywood cinema, even a proto-Holocaust film must have some boy-girl stuff. Grimm’s nephew has fallen in love with a local Polish girl—Marja’s daughter. When she is shot at the “officers clubhouse,” presumably for resisting rape, the sight of her dead body ignites the nascent decency in the boy. As he walks to an altar to pray over her body, he rips off the Nazi insignia from his SS uniform. Grimm shoots him in the back.
Returning to the diegetic present, in the courtroom, Grimm is unrepentant and defiant. “You cannot crush us!” he yells at the tribunal. “We will rise again!”
Surprisingly, the film denies us the satisfaction of a Nuremberg ending: the hissible Nazi war criminal is not hanged, not even sentenced. “You are the jury,” the presiding judge says into the camera. It is left to us, the custodians of the postwar world, to render a verdict.
***
None Shall Escape was stark, depressing stuff for wartime audiences already overloaded with stark, depressing stuff in the newsreels. Whatever satisfaction might be taken from the prospect of an assured victory was more than tempered by the litany of Nazi horrors and the future necessity of dealing with the perpetrators.
Early reviews speculated that the story was based on “the career of notorious anti-Semite and pornographer, Julius Streicher,” publisher of Der Stürmer, but Streicher, for all his rabid anti-Semitism, never personally ordered the killing of a Jew. No matter: the Nazis offered real-life models aplenty for cinematic sociopaths and two of the creators of the film had firsthand knowledge of the type.
Joseph Than, the co-writer of the original story, was a German refugee who escaped to Hollywood from Occupied France in 1941; he received the Croix de Guerre for helping a pair of French soldiers escape the Nazis. With playwright Alfred Neumann, likely the English language half of the writing partnership, he rendered an on-the-ground account of a Nazi Occupation. Film scholar Jan Christopher Horak, director of the UCLA Film and Television Archives, notes that reports of Nazi genocide also filtered into Hollywood’s sizable refugee community by way of Freies Deutschland, a widely circulated German-language Communist newspaper published in Mexico.
Like Than, director Andre DeToth, the 31-year-old Hungarian refugee who had come to Hollywood in 1942, brought a grim expertise to the subject, being all too familiar with the killing field that was Poland under the Nazi jackboot. In 1939, as a cameraman, he had been in Warsaw and was forced by the Nazis to film propaganda scenes of starving Poles, whom the Nazis lined up, whipped, and forced to smile for the cameras. He remained traumatized by the memory—and his role in the fabricated footage—for the rest of his life. “They showed these things all over Germany, all over the world,” he lamented in an interview in 1994. By way of catharsis, a nearly identical episode unspools in None Shall Escape: the Nazis corral hungry Polish villagers around a food wagon, order them to smile, and dispense food for a propaganda film. After the newsreel cameraman gets the shot, the villagers are rousted away.
Screenwriter Lester Cole was given the assignment to adapt the story for the screen. Initially, Columbia Pictures chieftain Harry Cohn had qualms about Cole, an out-front and party-line Communist, figuring the writer would let dogma overrule drama, but associate producer Burt Kelly and executive producer Sam Bischoff stood by their choice. Cole thus got one the few chances he ever had in Hollywood to contribute to what he deemed “a film that was important.” (In 1947, with nine like-minded comrades, Cole would be cited for contempt of Congress, jailed, and rendered unemployable for refusing to answer the $64,000 question posed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities: “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”)
Cole admired Than and Neumann’s original story (it was ultimately nominated for an Academy Award), but from his point of view it lacked an essential element: agency. “The Jews were passive; they went to their deaths without a struggle,” he recalled in his 1981 memoir Hollywood Red. “True, some did; but others did not.” Producer Kelly agreed that “passivity was horror but not drama.” Hence, the rabbi’s defiant monologue.
Marsha Hunt—the great Hollywood actress who played Marja and just celebrated her 99th birthday Oct. 17—gave credit to the screenwriter. “God bless Lester Cole,” she told me recently, recalling None Shall Escape proudly. “It was a privilege to be in it,” she said. “We all felt very passionately about the subject.” She remembered Cole as being outspoken about his beliefs, but she is too modest to mention that so was she: Hunt was blacklisted for years for her progressive activism. She is delighted that, after decades in hibernation, the film is getting a second life.
Before being deemed fit for exhibition, None Shall Escape, like all wartime Hollywood cinema, had to pass muster with two censorship regimes—the Production Code Administration (PCA) and the Motion Picture Bureau of the Office of War Information (OWI). The PCA was responsible for morality, the OWI for wartime values. Either could suck the lifeblood out of a gritty drama.
Against expectations, the PCA passed the film with barely a murmur of objection. The harsh realities of World War II had inured even censors to the kind of material that might have once been unthinkable—the level of casual brutality, the frank utterances of Nazi anti-Semitism, and the scope of Nazi depravity. Predictably, the depiction of the seduction and suicide of the Polish schoolgirl was the main focus of concern. “We believe this element could be handled so as to be acceptable under the provisions of the Production Code, provided of course, that there was no attempt to dramatize the action further than what is already indicated in your outline,” PCA chief Joseph I. Breen informed Harry Cohn during the preproduction vetting of the script. Breen also suggested that the age of the girl be at least 16 years, “for obvious reasons.” In good Codely fashion, Grimm’s crime is committed off-screen and referred to so elliptically that a naïve viewer might not understand what had transpired.
The Breen office knew that a more formidable hurdle for None Shall Escape—“on account of its unusual premise”—was the OWI’s Motion Picture Bureau. The agency gave legally unbinding but culturally coercive advice to Hollywood on how best to serve the war effort, examining scripts along guidelines articulated in a 167-page guidebook, The Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry.
Even more than the Breen office, the government film reviewers gave None Shall Escape a bright green light. “I think there are potentialities in this story for one of the greatest war pictures conceivable,” the Los Angeles bureau head told producer Sam Bischoff after a once-over of an early script. “By projecting the pledges made by President Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and other United Nations leaders, that those guilty of atrocities and violations of international law will be tried and punished, new hope could be given to the peoples of those countries now occupied by Axis forces.” Viewing the final print, the bureau was no less upbeat: “The first picture dealing with the punishment of Nazi war criminals to be made in Hollywood, None Shall Escapehas emerged as a thoughtful and intelligent examination of this important postwar problem.”
Anticipating box-office gold and critical acclaim, Columbia gave None Shall Escapean elaborate publicity roll out, pre-releasing the film to 19 New England theaters prior to a national release on Feb. 3, 1944. To ballyhoo the film, one enterprising exhibitor marched his ushers in mock-up Nazi uniforms, wrists tied together in ropes, through the local Main Street. Naturally, though, sexual not jurisprudential enticements dominated the ad-pub strategy. “Thank heaven your daughter wasn’t there!” shouted the taglines. “But what about the women who were there?” Hollywood was just discovering the erotic menace of a Nazi in uniform—a trope that would serve postwar cinema, not to mention entire tributaries of the porn industry, quite well in the years to come.

(New York Times archive)
Wartime critics could not help but be impressed by the audacity of the project ( “If the film had no more than its ‘firstness’ with which to claim the interest, it would merit public attention,” observed the Film Daily), but the critical consensus was not all Columbia had hoped for. Though admitting the “precedentially important” aspects of the film, Motion Picture Daily felt that it “adds nothing consequential to the technique of anti-Nazi pictures, but does raise the question of whether the entertainment screen can deal successfully with postwar issues at this point in the calendar.” New York Times critic Bosley Crowther was struck by the moments of “genuine horror when a group of Jews are slain,” but astutely dissected what would be a perennial Hollywood problem in depicting the nature of Nazism: “By drawing its hate to just one person, it condemns the specific but tends to let the general go.”
Despite the tepid response, Variety speculated that films dealing with postwar problems would probably be “the screen’s next cycle.” It was not to be: Powerful considerations militated against a cycle of postwar films made during the war.
First, there was always the distinct possibility that a predictive scenario might be overtaken by events: The Master Race (1944), written and directed by Lester Cole’s future Hollywood Ten comrade Herbert J. Biberman, produced in the blush of confidence after D-Day and released in September 1944, prematurely forecast a victory in Europe in November 1944.
Second, the moviegoing public wasn’t buying. Harsh, soul-searching melodramas about Nazis ruthlessly oppressing the peoples of Europe made for a bleak night out in an era craving uplift and diversion.
Above all, assuring America that a victorious outcome was a foregone conclusion might lull the nation into complacency. Why struggle and sacrifice if victory was a done deal? In 1944-1945, as the Nazis tenaciously fought the Allied advance, the OWI, initially so enthused about the postwar forecasts, had second thoughts about telling the homefront—and the men and women on the front lines—that the war was effectively over.
In June 1944, William R. Weaver, the Hollywood editor for the trade weekly Motion Picture Herald, summed up the downside of prematurely postwar cinema. Hollywood producers, he reported, “are leaving the blueprinting of the postwar world strictly to the politicians and pundits whose blueprints cost them about a million dollars less than the million dollars per copy which the producer would be compelled to pay for his with no brighter prospect of seeing it adopted.” He referred to two additional factors weighing against venturing into geopolitical prophecy. One was a pertinent case in point: “Columbia’s experience with None Shall Escape, which ran up something of a box office record in reverse.” The other was the fact that “Washington has let it be known that there’s no eagerness there to have Hollywood touch the matter in any way.”
With no box office mandate and understandable government resistance, Hollywood backed off. Best not to get too concerned with the postwar era until the era was truly postwar, the surrender documents signed and sealed. The industry would not chase after Nazi war criminals again until after victory in Europe, notably in Orson Welles’s The Stranger (1946), in which a War Crimes Commission investigator played by Edward G. Robinson pursues an architect of the Holocaust to a bucolic college town in Vermont.
Finally, an ugly experience precipitated by None Shall Escape must have made Hollywood uneasy, if not heartsick, for reasons that were closer to home than war-torn Poland. Variety was appalled to report that scenes in the film where the Nazis are shown desecrating a synagogue and insulting the rabbi were “not unsympathetically received by certain bigoted individuals in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and other localities. … Reports from some theaters said that hoodlums applauded and cheered.”
Interreligious fellowships condemned the antics, but the outbreak of brownshirt-like disruptions in stateside theaters in the middle of WWII was a reminder of the homegrown version of the hatred still thriving in Europe. The in-house anti-Semitism also pointed ahead to a reckoning that, in the postwar era, neither Hollywood nor America could escape.
***
Thomas Doherty last wrote for Tablet magazine about Nazi propaganda films.
Thomas Doherty, a professor of American Studies at Brandeis University, is the author ofHollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939.
UNITED STATES / JAMES KIRCHICK
Who Goes Trump?
What ultimately determines support for the GOP nominee isn’t race, class, or political ideology. It’s character.
UNITED STATES
Who Goes Trump?
What ultimately determines support for the GOP nominee isn’t race, class, or political ideology. It’s character. by James Kirchick
It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Trump. Having gone through the experience many times, I have come to know the types: the born Trumpkins, the Trumpkins whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would go Trump.
It is preposterous to think that Trump supporters are created by economic or regional characteristics. The rural white working-class may be more susceptible to Trumpism than most people, but I doubt that preference is inherent. Hispanics are barred, but that’s an arbitrary, circumstantial ruling. I know lots of Hispanics who are born Trumpkins and many others who would support Trump tomorrow morning if given an opening to do so. Trumpism has nothing to do with class, ethnicity, or even gender. It appeals to a certain type of mind.
Let us look around the room. The gentleman standing beside the fireplace with an untouched glass of whiskey beside him on the mantelpiece is Governor A, a man with homes in the country’s finest ZIP codes. The son of a Republican governor of Michigan, he has been married to the same woman for over 40 years, and raised five enviably accomplished and attractive young men; has had a classical education but has not a touch of snobbery in him; is full of humor, courtesy and wit. He left a highly lucrative career in private equity to rescue a failing Olympic bid in the city of Salt Lake, and later ruled as a moderate Republican governor in one of the country’s bluest states, earning a high approval rating from his Democratic constituents. He is modest, a staunch friend, and a man who greatly enjoys the company of his dozens of grandchildren.
Beside him stands Mayor B, a man who showed remarkable heroism and leadership after the terrorist attacks against New York City 15 years ago. He is a good fellow and was extremely popular. He had gay roommates and enjoyed dressing in drag. But once his party began to go Trump, he joined up. Why? Why the one and not the other?
Senator C, a Midwestern Republican, spent most of the past four years leading the charge against the Iranian nuclear deal negotiated by President Barack Obama and endorsed by his former secretary of state and likely successor, Hillary Clinton. “Tens of thousands of people in the Middle East are gonna lose their lives because of this decision,” he has said, characterizing it as “the greatest appeasement since Chamberlain gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler.” Yet even his fervent opposition to the signature foreign-policy achievement of the Democrats was not enough to persuade him to go Trump, a man he has denounced as a “malignant clown.” Senator C is a veteran and since recovering from a stroke some years ago, has embraced a new, more altruistic outlook on life. “I promised myself that I would return to the Senate with an open mind and greater respect for others,” he said after triumphantly ascending the Capitol steps to the applause of his colleagues. He despises Trump.
Former Speaker of the House D has risen beyond his real abilities by virtue of his cunning, intelligence and unscrupulousness. Like Mayor B, he is on his third wife; the first he served divorce papers to while she lay in a hospital bed stricken with cancer. He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful. That is his sole measure of value—success. Trumpism as a minority movement would attract only his scorn. As a movement likely to attain power, it attracts his endorsement.
Mrs. E would go Trump as sure as you are born. That statement surprises you? Mrs. E seems so sweet, so clinging, so cowed. She is. She is a masochist. She is married to a man who never ceases to humiliate her, to lord it over her, to treat her with less consideration than he does his dogs. Mrs. E, who married him very young, has convinced herself that he is a genius and that there is something of superior womanliness in her utter lack of pride, in her doglike devotion. She speaks disapprovingly of other “masculine” or insufficiently devoted wives. Her husband, however, is bored to death with her. He neglects her completely, and she is looking for someone else before whom to pour her ecstatic self-abasement. She will titillate with pleased excitement to the first popular hero who proclaims the basic subordination of women, which is why she is so infatuated with Mr. Trump.
***
The above is adapted, in some places word-for-word, from a 75-year-old Harper’sessay titled “Who Goes Nazi?” Written by Dorothy Thompson, the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany, the article presents readers with the aforementioned “macabre parlor game” in which she secretly assesses which guests at a random social function might “go Nazi” given the proper political and social conditions. As Thompson keenly observed from her time in Germany, there was no single demographic “type” of Nazi supporter; workers and businessmen and intellectuals and landed gentry all backed Adolf Hitler’s political movement, just as workers and businessmen and intellectuals and landed gentry opposed it. There were even Jews, Thompson wrote, “who have repudiated their own ancestors in order to become “Honorary Aryans and Nazis.” Nazism, Thompson argues, “appeals to a certain type of mind,” not a rigid composite. As such, her article is a timeless analysis of the authoritarian mentality and makes for disturbingly relevant reading today.
Since Donald Trump declared his candidacy for president 16 months ago, it has become a lazy journalistic trope to attribute his rise to the economic travails of the white working class in an era of globalization. Contrary to popular conception, however, the median household income of a Trump primary voter is a healthy $72,000 a year, well above the $62,000 national average and higher than the median incomes of those who supported both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Meanwhile, 44 percent of Trump voters have college degrees, far more than the 29 percent of the general adult population. According to a Gallup working paper based upon interviews with some 87,000 Trump supporters over the past year, the most exhaustive statistical analysis of the Trump phenomenon completed thus far, “There appears to be no link whatsoever between exposure to trade competition and support for nationalist policies in America, as embodied by the Trump campaign.” The same study also found “little clear evidence that economic hardship predicts support for Trump, in that higher household incomes tend to predict higher Trump support.”
What does drive enthusiasm for Trump? According to the American National Election Survey, the best determinant of whether someone is a Trump supporter—even more than Republican Party affiliation—is if they think President Barack Obama is a Muslim. Eighty-nine percent of those who believe this racist conspiracy theory will have a higher opinion of Trump than Clinton. A Pew poll, meanwhile, reports that Republicans who believe America’s impending non-white majority is “bad for the country” are overwhelmingly positive toward Trump, while a qualified sample of 10,000 Trump Twitter supporters finds that a third follow white nationalist accounts.
Support for the Republican nominee, then, seems to hinge upon a mix of racial resentment and pining for strongman rule. Matthew MacWilliams, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Massachusetts, says that the only statistical variable predicting support for Trump is a voter’s authoritarian inclinations. “It is time for those who would appeal to our better angels to take his insurgency seriously and stop dismissing his supporters as a small band of the dispossessed,” he writes. “Trump support is firmly rooted in American authoritarianism and, once awakened, it is a force to be reckoned with.”
As Dorothy Thompson demonstrated 75 years ago with National Socialism, gauging sympathy for Trump is less a matter of class or ideology (for Trump doesn’t really have one) than it is one of individual character. The best way to understand the Trump phenomenon isn’t by reading Hillbilly Elegy, the widely praised memoir about the Appalachian underclass, but through something more prosaic: personal integrity.
Ask yourself: Among the men you know who support Trump, are they unlikely to be bothered by their candidate’s lecherous musings and admitted sexual predation because they view women in a similarly odious fashion? As for the women who support Trump: Are they the kind who gravitate toward abusive men? Is the uncle or work colleague who always puts an emphasis on the president’s middle name backing Trump? “Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi,” Thompson observed. “But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.” Much the same can be said of those who go Trump.
Characterological defect as an explanation for Trump support is even more pronounced among the candidate’s elite enablers; people in positions of power and influence who, unlike Trump’s less-economically secure supporters, cannot appeal to their pitiable life station as justification for backing the most unqualified person ever to win the presidential nomination of a major political party. From Roger Stone to Roger Ailes to Steve Bannon and the bigots at Breitbart, the cast of characters composing Trump’s inner circle is, without exception, a collection of loathsome—some might say deplorable—individuals. The significance of personal character becomes especially clear when one contrasts a Trump-supporting public figure with his or her non-Trump supporting peer.
Take Eric Metaxas and Erick Erickson. Both are evangelical Christian conservative media personalities, the former a Trump supporter, the latter a mainstay of the #NeverTrump movement. Reading Erickson over the past year, one witnesses a fundamentally decent man grappling with what it means to be a Christian in the face of a Republican nominee who so wantonly disregards fundamental biblical teachings. For speaking out against Trump, Erickson and his family have been subject to constant death threats from the nominee’s supporters.
Contrast Erickson with Metaxas, a Trump proponent and what passes these days for a conservative evangelical “intellectual.” Metaxas is a biographer of abolitionist William Wilberforce and anti-Nazi pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christians of heroic moral conscience and courage who are also heroes to the country’s liberal elites. Writing recently in The Wall Street Journal, Metaxas audaciously likened voting for the fascistic Trump with Bonhoeffer’s joining the Valkyrie plot to kill Adolf Hitler. Metaxas can make this claim with a straight face because, like many other Trump supporters, he has been peddling a form of apocalyptic political extremism that sees the Democratic Party as hell-bent on a mission to destroy America. “The fascistic globalism of HRC/Obama is similar to the threat that German fascist nationalism was in Bonhoeffer’s day,” Metaxas recently tweeted in the style of a doomsday prophet. “Both are anti-God.” Metaxas’s calling the bloodlessly centrist Clinton “Hitlery” is thus the logical conclusion of this catastrophizing mode of ex cathedradiscourse. He is Elmer Gantry in a nicer suit.
Turning to conservative talk radio, consider Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Both men have played a role in poisoning our political discourse with their uncompromisingly partisan ranting that demonizes political adversaries as traitors. But it is only Beck who has reflected upon his past divisiveness and repented for it. “I think I played a role, unfortunately, in helping tear the country apart, and it’s not who we are,” he remorsefully told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly in 2014. Today, not coincidentally, it is Beck who opposes Trump, while Hannity serves as his most loyal mouthpiece.
David Horowitz and Ron Radosh have experienced similar life trajectories as Jewish, ex-radical-leftist historians who eventually made their homes on the right. Radosh, however, has always been a mensch—a gentle soul who still likes to play the folk music he learned at the feet of the Stalin-loving Pete Seeger. Horowitz, by contrast, remains the thug he was five decades ago when he was cavorting with the Black Panthers, still a Stalinist but of the right-wing variety. Guess which septuagenarian Jewish conservative is the Trump critic and which the pro-Trump fanatic?
While we’re on the subject of Jewish Trump supporters, Thompson made an interesting observation about the unlikeliest of Nazis. “I know lots of Jews who are born Nazis and many others who would heil Hitler tomorrow morning if given a chance,” she wrote. Reflecting upon some Jews of my acquaintance who have twisted themselves into supporting Trump, a candidate whose campaign has stirred anti-Semitic passions to a degree unlike anything in recent American political history, I can claim a similar familiarity. Can I really profess surprise that the admirer of Meir Kahane I’ve known since high school backs Trump, a man who, like the late Jewish fascist, promises to ethnically cleanse his country of millions of people? Elsewhere, back in January, David P. Goldman, a Tablet contributor who sometimes writes under the pseudonym “Spengler,” was asked by an Israeli politician to characterize Trump. “Imagine if Hitler had liked Jews,” he replied. I couldn’t have put it any better myself. Today, Goldman has come around to support the man he described, less than a year ago, as a philosemitic Hitler.
More than any book I’ve read or lecture I’ve attended, the Trump phenomenon has explained the 1930s for me. Witnessing so many otherwise rational people fall for the lies of a demagogic con man who promises that he “alone” can “fix” all of our country’s problems and bleats about throwing his opponent in jail (when he’s not urging his raucous crowds to kill her), one begins to fathom how a modern, educated, advanced country like Germany went Nazi. You already see the stirrings of a nascent fascist movement in America. The parallels between the GOP’s amoral cowards willing to do anything to achieve power and the German leaders who thought Hitler could be “controlled” are as pathetic as they are frightening.
Not long ago, I was conversing with the chief of staff of a former high-ranking congressional Republican, the epitome of an “establishment” politician, who explained his support for Trump on purely partisan lines. Trump was the party’s nominee, after all, and as a loyal Republican, it was this man’s duty to support him. If the GOP nominated a bona fide Nazi, I asked incredulously, would you support him, too? Yes, he replied.
We spend too much time attacking Trump’s person, fooling ourselves into thinking he’s just a sui generis figure, without listening to those who support him. Plenty of people who voted for the Nazi Party weren’t motivated by anti-Semitism but other, worthier concerns like rampant inflation, an atmosphere of violent political chaos, and Germany’s diminished place in Europe. Like Trump supporters, these Germans wanted to regain a sense of individual and national respect that they felt had been lost. Weimar Germany was awash in distrust, fear, and resentment, feelings that, while not nearly as acute, characterize much of America today.
It’s true that some Trump supporters loathe the man’s behavior and more outré positions, but nonetheless see him as something of a savior figure. They are willing to put their faith in a sociopath because they have convinced themselves that the alternative will literally destroy the country. On the other hand, many, perhaps most, Trump supporters aren’t voting for him in spite of his talking like a thug, demeaning women, and hurling racist insinuations at the country’s first black president, but because he does these things.
“Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi,” Dorothy Thompson wrote. “Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them. Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi.” Trump supporters are people who, were he to become president, would explain away the mosque firebombing or Attorney General Chris Christie’s “opening up the libel laws” against The New York Times, just as passive Nazi voters looked away from the “Don’t buy from Jews” graffiti spray-painted on the neighborhood grocery store. These people are lacking “something in them,” a moral code, and their very large numbers are a troubling indicator of a rot in the American soul.
***
You can help support Tablet’s unique brand of Jewish journalism. Click here to donate today.
James Kirchick, a fellow with the Foreign Policy Initiative, is a columnist at Tablet. He is a former writer at large for Radio Free Europe based in Prague and a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow based in Berlin. His Twitter feed is @jkirchick.
OBSERVANCE / MIRIAM MANDEL LEVI
Women Without Hats
As a feminist in the Orthodox community, I’ve spent a lifetime trying to reconcile the choice to cover my hair
OBSERVANCE
Women Without Hats
As a feminist in the Orthodox community, I’ve spent a lifetime trying to reconcile the choice to cover my hair by Miriam Mandel Levi
Five years ago, I stepped out of my car onto a Jerusalem street and felt an unfamiliar lightness, followed by a panicked feeling of something valuable forgotten or missing.
It was the first time I’d ventured out in public without a hat in 20 years.
Leaving the hat on the seat of the car was a deliberate move, an experiment, to see what it would feel like to go bareheaded. It felt good, unencumbered for the first time in decades. The sun was warm on my scalp, the breeze lifted strands of hair and laid them crisscross on my face. I indulged in old, familiar gestures: tucking my hair behind my ear, twirling a strand around my finger, shaking my head side to side.
Wouldn’t it be liberating, I thought, to remove the hat once and for all? But the more I indulged this fantasy, the more heavily the past weighed on me, the louder the still, small voice became. As I headed back to the car, I saw my hat on the seat, waiting like a patient passenger.
When I was single and secular, I saw the hats Orthodox women wore as a symbol of their oppression at the hands of a religious patriarchy. When I became religious and married, I adopted the very practice I had reviled. Though I spent a lifetime trying to reconcile the choice to cover my hair, I hardly had a day’s peace. The day I left my hat on the car seat signaled a change in the way I understood my place as a feminist in the Orthodox establishment and led me to the decision to discard my hats—but not to uncover my hair completely.
***
I grew up in a small Jewish community in Ottawa, Ontario. My family was not observant but my siblings and I attended Jewish day school and Jewish camp and celebrated Jewish holidays at the home of my more traditional grandparents. Our Jewish life was filled with contradictions: We kept kosher at home but ate treyf in restaurants, lit Shabbat candles but then watched the NHL playoffs on television. Be Jewish, but not too Jewish, the message seemed to be. As Jewish as we may have been, we were in equal measure enlightened, rational, tolerant, liberal, patriotic Canadians.
When I hit my teens, the quaint, quasi-traditional lifestyle in which I had been raised seemed, all of a sudden, insufferably inauthentic and hypocritical. To make this point abundantly clear to my parents, I read The Catcher in the Rye tucked between the pages of my machzor at shul on Rosh Hashanah. On Yom Kippur, between minchaand neila, I snuck off with a friend to enjoy coffee and a cinnamon danish in a nearby café.
By the time I was 18, Judaism was a relic of my past. I became a vegetarian, free spirit, activist for human rights and world peace, and, above all, a feminist. I had grown up under the banner of feminism: equal pay for work of equal value, affirmative action, take back the night. Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” was my anthem.
What I did not realize, when I cast off all vestiges of my Jewish life, was that I had let slip away the values that had shaped me, my connection to the past and, very possibly, the essence of who I was. I would spend many subsequent years trying to retrieve a sense of meaning in my life and searching for my place in the world.
That search took me from Kierkegaard to Sartre, The Brothers Karamazov to To the Lighthouse, Amnesty International to the Toronto Peace Network, Jungian dream therapy to existential psychotherapy, the jungles of Rwanda to the beaches of Elba. At the age of 26, I landed at the doorstep of Aish Hatorah. There I relearned the basic tenets of Judaism, and by and by, about the role of women—and specifically the obligation of hair covering. The rabbis explained that hair is erva, nakedness. Married women must cover their hair to reduce the risk of rousing men’s passions, they said. By covering your hair you emphasize internal over external beauty, you reserve your hair and yourself for your husband alone. They quoted Song of Songs: “Your hair is a flock of goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead.”
This was Toronto in the 1980s. Feminism had not yet begun to make inroads into Orthodox Judaism. Women weren’t studying Talmud. There were no Orthodox women’s prayer groups, women’s megillah readings, women’s advocates in rabbinical courts. The rabbis said women were on a higher spiritual level than men; that’s why they were exempt from so many of the legal requirements. They didn’t need the rigors of learning and ritual to refine their souls.
I didn’t buy it. I believed that hair covering perpetuated the myth of woman as temptress. It punished women for men’s inability to control their sexual impulses. No way was I subscribing to modesty edicts that obfuscated women. But at the same time, I was drawn to Orthodoxy’s emphasis on spiritual growth, ethics, and tikkun olam. I felt at home for the first time in years in the Jewish traditions of my past. Over the next few years, I took on mitzvot, carefully sidestepping those that offended my liberal, feminist sensibilities.
When I began dating the Orthodox man who would become my husband, and he raised the subject of hair covering, I took up arms: “Why should I cover my hair? Standards of modesty have changed in the last hundred years. No enlightened person considers a bare head immodest.”
“Take it up with the sages,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, you can do what you like.”
I would do what I liked. There was only one problem: I didn’t want to pick and choose which commandments I kept. That was the watered-down Judaism my parents practiced, the lifestyle I had rejected. The accommodations my parents had made may have worked for them as they tried to adapt their Eastern European parents’ shtetl Judaism to their Western lifestyle, but they didn’t work for me. I sought an absolute, nonnegotiable truth. The mitzvot emanated from a divine source, the norms and values were binding. Halacha was a package deal; you were in or you were out.
And so for me, when I married at age 31, Judaism trumped feminism. I started wearing a hat.
My mother didn’t say anything, but I knew I’d set back her cause a hundred years. My secular friends were dumbfounded; I had betrayed the sisterhood.
***
It wasn’t easy. I wished hair covering was something I took for granted, the way young women did who had grown up in Orthodox households and seen their mothers and aunts and grandmothers cover their hair. I wished I had felt compelled to cover my hair for love or fear of God. But I didn’t. It was, in the end, a bitter pill I had to swallow.
I tried to make the best of a difficult situation. I liked the way the modesty dictates emphasized dignity and respect in relationships. Besides, it wasn’t as if my hair was my best feature. It was thin and mousy, probably better off unseen. And as a Jew, having a choice of hats beat a wimple, burqa, or Amish bonnet.
A year into our marriage, my husband, son, and I moved to Israel, where people proclaim their affiliation to a religious stream by the size and style of their hair covering: Ultra-Orthodox women wear wigs or snoods. National religious women wrap their hair in scarves. More modern religious women, like myself, wear hats with different degrees of hair showing. In Canada, the hats I wore had been no more than a fashion accessory, but in Israel they defined me. I was a walking advertisement for Modern Orthodoxy, a community I was proud to represent.
I started out wearing baseball caps. They were casual and cheerful and suited the young, newly married me. But when I took them off at the end of the day, my flock of goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead looked more like a bedraggled musk-ox.
A couple of years later, I swapped the caps for berets, which gave me a French flair. Depending on the way I angled them, I could appear intellectual, artistic, or revolutionary. But when I took the berets off, especially the wool ones, I had hat hair again. And the berets added static, which made me look like Jimi Hendrix.
Besides the endless bad hair days, there was the fashion conundrum. It was hard enough to coordinate an outfit with jewelry, a jacket, and shoes. When I added a hat to the equation, I invariably had a fashion flub.
I reminded myself of a verse in Proverbs: “Grace is elusive and beauty is vanity; a woman who fears God, she should be praised.” I would not let vanity get the better of me.
Over the next 10 years, I cycled through different stages and phases of hats. Hats for day and hats for night. Hats for summer, winter, and days it looked like rain. Hats for casual wear, formal, and in-between. Hats that were comfortable for a maximum of two hours and those that could stretch to four or eight. Kofias, eight-point caps, and bucket hats. I could have opened a millinery.
Some, like my wide-brimmed straw hats, looked great on me. Others looked like a bird had been shot midair and plummeted earthward to land on my head.
As the years passed, my frustration grew. The hats made my head itchy and sweaty. Unexposed to the sun, my hair lost its luster. The chafing of the material against my scalp seemed to expedite hair loss. I resented having to suffer this discomfort in order to quell men’s urges, particularly since I didn’t believe the hats were doing the job (more likely the weight gain of three pregnancies and dowdy dresses were sufficiently subduing them). But it didn’t matter how I felt, I reminded myself; I was not the final arbiter. I had to find a way to make peace with my mantle.
Year in and year out, my hats and I wrangled. I had a short reprieve when I came across a quotation in the Talmud by Rabbi Huna Ben Joshua, a third-century sage, who said that he never walked four cubits with his head uncovered, “because the Presence is always over my head.” His proclamation is one of the sources for the custom of men wearing kippot. Rabbi Huna’s words resonated with me. Perhaps if I thought of my hats as a reminder of this divine presence, I would better tolerate, even appreciate them. Hair covering would have a meaning and purpose I could embrace wholeheartedly.
Unfortunately, Rabbi Huna’s inspiration was short-lived. Within a matter of weeks, my hats did not remind me of the Presence any more than my socks did.
I was uncomfortable and frustrated but not the kind of person who reneged on commitments. Besides, I was afraid of the slippery slope. What if the decision to uncover my hair was the insidious onset of a spiritual decline, an irreparable crack in the foundation? What if my children understood from my action that all of the commandments were up for grabs?
Every once in a while, I’d bring up the topic with my husband. “I’ve had it,” I’d say. “I can’t stand it anymore.” I would have liked to cast him as the enemy, the one subjugating me by forcing me to wear hats. That way I would have had a target at which to mount my insurrection. But, too smart to take the bait, he calmly reiterated that he respected whichever choice I made.
When I commiserated with my observant friends, many of whom were also baalot tshuva, they said they had grown used to covering their hair. The coverings had become an organic part of them, an extension of their heads, like a fourth meningeal layer. A few admitted to struggling with the hair covering, but accepted the yoke of the kingdom of heaven. On the whole, they seemed to have made peace with the obligation. Ten years had passed since I began wearing hats; it was time for me to make peace, too.
Fed up with the struggle, tired of living in cognitive dissonance and faced with more pressing concerns—like raising three children and making a living—I decided to call a truce.
Some of the Jewish laws I kept made sense, others didn’t; some were easy to uphold, others challenging. Yet they were all part of this way of life I had chosen, a set of values and traditions which linked me to a people and a historical chain going back 4,000 years. The hat on my head was truly a small price to pay to be part of this grand heritage.
The truce held 10 years until the day intentionally left my hat on the passenger seat of the car to see how being hatless would feel. But another five years would pass until I left behind my hats for good.
One day last year, I looked through family photo albums. In every snapshot, I saw myself smiling and looking up from under the brim of a hat. In some photos, the brim cast a shadow over my eyes. In others, the hat had fallen askew or my hand was laid flat against the top of my head to prevent the hat from flying off in the wind. In a few photos, I’d just taken off my hat and, hair plastered to my scalp, was indicating to the photographer, “please don’t.” I had shouldered the burden of hair covering for 25 long years. It was enough.
When I turned 55, the fragile armistice between my hats and me crumbled. I stuffed my hats in a large orange garbage bag and dropped them off at a used-clothing charity.
***
How binding is the commandment to cover one’s hair? Whether it is a biblical or rabbinic injunction is a matter of dispute. What is indisputable is that the specifics of hair covering (where, when, how much, what style) have been determined largely by community standards.
Women covered their hair in Talmudic and medieval times but there was a period in Jewish history, post-WWII, during which Orthodox women did not cover their hair. Today most do, but uncovering it is not such a stretch. We’re not talking lobster bisque or harlotry.
Does anyone keep all 613 commandments? Excluding the ones from which we are exempt because they apply to the temple or the priestly class, don’t we all do the best we can? I suppose it is my misfortune that the mitzvah I find hardest to keep sits on top of my head in full view of others. If I had decided to take to checking my email on Shabbat, no one would know. My frumkite, at least its façade, would appear undiminished.
I’ve made many sacrifices to live this Torah life: observing family purity laws, fasting six days a year, dressing in skirts and sleeves, to name just a few. I don’t understand or embrace every mitzvah I keep and that’s fine, because I acknowledge that each is part of an intricate tapestry that binds us as a people, distinguishes us, and brings us into a greater relationship with holiness. I’m willing to make sacrifices in order to live an observant life because I believe it’s the most authentic expression of Judaism and the most likely to survive.
But I’m no longer sure that Orthodoxy is an all-or-nothing life choice. Observance is a continuum on which we each locate ourselves. Every one of us struggles to find a livable balance between personal freedom and submission to authority, commitment to self and commitment to other, even if that Other is creator of the universe or a long-held tradition. “In the end,” as my mother-in-law says, “everyone writes their own Shulchan Aruch.”
I may be hatless today, but you won’t find me bareheaded on the street. Today I wear scarves, strips of colorful cloth wrapped in a band around the center of my head and tied at the base of my neck. I know the scarves don’t adhere to even the most minimal legal standard of hair covering. They aren’t particularly modest and don’t necessarily identify me as married or religious. It’s very possible they will, one day, go the way of the caps and berets. But I can abide them. And in some symbolic way, they tie me—by a thread, by a scarf—to the Orthodox life I have chosen and within which I struggle.
***
Like this article? Sign up for our Daily Digest to get Tablet Magazine’s new content in your inbox each morning.
Miriam Mandel Levi’s essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction’s anthology Same Time Next Week, Brain, Child, Literary Mama, and Under the Sun magazine.

‘Supergirl’ Naomi Kutin Powerlifts Her Way to the Big Screen
New Jersey native Naomi Kutin, 14, once deadlifted 225 percent of her body weight. But she doesn’t lift on Shabbos.
THE SCROLL
‘Supergirl’ Naomi Kutin Powerlifts Her Way to the Big Screen
New Jersey native Naomi Kutin, 14, once deadlifted 225 percent of her body weight. But she doesn’t lift on Shabbos. by Jonathan Zalman
There is something special about watching Naomi Kutin, a Fairlawn, New Jersey, native, practice her craft: powerlifting. Here she is at 10 years old in 2012, setting a personal record by deadlifting 209 lbs, or about 225 percent of her body weight. That same year she also broke the world record for raw squats in the 97 lbs. division. All before she was a teenager, let alone a bat mitzvah. Take a look for yourself:

“Because I’m Jewish I cannot lift on Shabbos,” Kutin, who is Modern Orthodox, told The Forward in 2012.
“Like everything else,” Ed, Naomi’s father, told The Jewish Press, “it is really about balancing our observant lifestyle.”
“[Shabbos is] when all the girls my age will lift. Sometimes there are contests that go on Sundays so I can meet the girls that are lifting, but sometimes it’s kind of annoying that…I can’t lift with them.”
When Naomi was 8 years old, her parents brought her to her first meet, in Clearfield, Pa. She lifted 148 pounds, setting her first national record. Today, her purple-painted bedroom is dotted with medals; a shelf of trophies overflows onto a pile of stuffed animals.
“My husband and I figured she would last about six months before she lost interest,” Neshama Kutin told The Jewish Press. “Lo and behold, that wasn’t the case.”
Supergirl, a new documentary by director Jessee Auritt, follows Naomi’s life from the age of 11 to 14. Here’s the director on the motivation behind her film (which was funded partially via Kickstarter), from My Jewish Learning:
[W]hat fascinated me more than the fact that this little girl had superhuman strength, was the fact that she was even powerlifting at all. To me, “Orthodox Jewish girl powerlifter” was an oxymoron and frankly unfathomable. While I’m not a weightlifter, I am Jewish, although not Orthodox. From my knowledge of Jewish law, I didn’t understand how an Orthodox Jewish girl could be competing in the male-dominated sport of powerlifting, particularly because of the dress code requirements (powerlifters must wear a formfitting wrestling singlet when competing). While I didn’t quite comprehend how this was possible, I found it awe-inspiring and was compelled to dig deeper and explore what life actually looked like for this barrier-breaking young girl.
Supergirl is coming this month to DOC NYC and the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival.

Jonathan Zalman, a staff editor, runs The Scroll, Tablet's news blog.
Worry About Trump’s Anti-Semitic Supporters, Not Mel Gibson
The ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ director thinks it’s unfair to judge his life’s work because of ‘one episode in the back of a police car on eight double tequilas’
THE SCROLL
Worry About Trump’s Anti-Semitic Supporters, Not Mel Gibson
The ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ director thinks it’s unfair to judge his life’s work because of ‘one episode in the back of a police car on eight double tequilas’ by Rachel Shukert
Well, well, well. Now that many of Trump’s supporters have apparently made the world a more hospitable place for anti-Semites, I’d say the timing is right for another Mel Gibson appearance, amirite?
Gibson—he of the multiple drunken racist, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic rants of years past, for which he is sorry—is currently promoting his new film, Hacksaw Ridge. The film tells the story of Desmond T. Doss, a Seventh-Day Adventist and conscientious objector who was nonetheless awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by President Truman for his service as a medic in World War II. The film stars Andrew Garfield (who is Jewish) and received a 10-minute standing ovation following its premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

Gibson, seemingly on the cusp of a rehabilitative comeback, has been gingerly making the press rounds, including an interview with Variety, in which he addresses the infamous 2006 incident during which he drunkenly stated to a traffic cop, apropos of nothing, that “Jews are responsible for the all wars in the world.” Gibson has apologized for it about a million times in the ensuing decade, and more or less does so again in the recent interview, stressing that he’s now sober and has striven to run his life and career in such a way that he has never knowingly discriminated against anybody. Said Mel: “And for one episode in the back of a police car on eight double tequilas to sort of dictate all the work, life’s work and beliefs and everything else that I have and maintain for my life is really unfair.”
Of course, it isn’t all groveling; in typical narcissistic straight white male fashion, Gibson can’t help but curl into a defensive, self-righteous stance, calling the (Jewish) cop who recorded his tirade “unscrupulous” and musing, with no small about of self-pity: “I guess as who I am, I’m not allowed to have a nervous breakdown, ever.”
I wouldn’t go that far. Most people manage to have nervous breakdowns without indicting an entire people for crimes against humanity, but whatever, that’s show biz (where, by the way, people have nervous breakdowns all the time; I had one just last week and I’m still working). But the toxic legacy of Gibson’s statements—and certainly not one that in his inebriated state, he could have possibly intended—endures. For many Jewish Americans, Gibson’s words were the first overtly (and disgusting) anti-Semitic statements they had ever heard from a public figure. We were shocked, but more malignantly, we were shocked out of being shocked. Oh right, we thought, some people say stuff like this. Isn’t that insane? Isn’t that ridiculous?
So now, when the toxic sludge of the Trump supporters and the white supremacists on Twitter and the deranged radio hosts—many of whom, one can imagine, were big fans of The Passion of the Christ—are ranting about international Jewish conspiracies, it doesn’t seem quite as surprising as it might once have. Which is the point. Mel Gibson may not have opened the floodgates, but in the putrid forest of old-style Jew hatred, he may have sown the first seed for what must not be normalized again. I’m glad he’s sorry. But I don’t like to think about what it will take to put the genie back into the bottle.
Previous: Gibson Gets Touchy Over ’06 Comments
Oh, Mel: Golden Globes Wrap-up
Related: Trump Watch [Tablet series]
Rachel Shukert, a Tablet Magazine columnist on pop culture, is the author of the memoirs Have You No Shame? and Everything Is Going To Be Great. Starstruck, the first in a series of three novels, is new from Random House. Her Twitter feed is @rachelshukert.
WATCH: David Duke Rants Against the Jews in Louisiana Senate Debate
‘There is a problem in America with a very strong, powerful tribal group that dominates our media and dominates our international banking,’ the former KKK Grand Wizard claimed
THE SCROLL
WATCH: David Duke Rants Against the Jews in Louisiana Senate Debate
‘There is a problem in America with a very strong, powerful tribal group that dominates our media and dominates our international banking,’ the former KKK Grand Wizard claimed by Yair Rosenberg

On Wednesday night, Louisiana held its Republican primary debate for Senate, an event which would normally not merit national attention if not for the fact that one of America’s most famous neo-Nazis participated in it. Inspired by Donald Trump’s electoral success, former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and ardent Trump backer David Duke threw his hat into the ring and received the 5 percent polling support necessary to make the debate stage.

What happened next was entirely predictable.

Asked by the moderator why he insisted on singling out and attacking Jewish journalists who reported stories critical of Trump, Duke did not disappoint. “There is a problem in America with a very strong, powerful tribal group that dominates our media and dominates our international banking,” he declared. (Duke had previously claimed that a Jewish conspiracy secretly inserted the plagiarized portions of Melania Trump’s Republican National Convention speech that cribbed from Michelle Obama.)

View image on Twitter

 Follow

David Duke @DrDavidDuke

Shamefully bias debate moderator, Lester Holt, has been married to his Jewish wife, Carol Hagen, since 1982.#RiggedElection #MAGA #AltRight

6:26 PM - 1 Oct 2016

 
•  551551 Retweets
 
•  628628 likes

View image on TwitterDavid Duke @DrDavidDuke

David Duke @DrDavidDuke


Six Million CNN Jews call for Trump to drop out of the race http://davidduke.com/six-million-cnn-jews-call-for-trump-to-drop-out-of-the-race/ …
8:01 PM - 8 Oct 2016

356356 Retweets
387387 likes





“I’m not opposed to all Jews,” Duke insisted. “I’m against Jews or anybody else that puts the interest of some of other place, another country, over our own country, that is controlling and dominating the media which is teaching black people and inspiring black people to hate white people and inciting them to violence, like the Black Lives Matter.” (Ironically, a man wearing a Black Lives Matter pin at a Bernie Sanders event in Brooklyn infamously harangued Sanders along very similar anti-Semitic lines, demonstrating the conspiratorial overlap on the far-right and far-left when it comes to Jews.)

Duke did not address why the Jewish media conspiracy had allowed his debate to be broadcast live on C-SPAN. Pressed on his claims by the moderator, he began darkly fulminating about the “neocons,” whom he dubbed “a cabal in this government that literally controls our foreign policy.” Then, rather than explaining how neocons had infiltrated the liberal administration of Barack Obama, Duke instead segued into arguing that Hillary Clinton “should be getting the electric chair.”

Duke’s performance is a reminder of how Trump’s candidacy—and his refusal to denounce his most bigoted supporters with anything but the most perfunctory brush-offs—has reinvigorated the country’s white supremacists, who now believe they have the electoral winds at their back. It would be the easiest electoral win in American history for Trump to publicly give a statement denouncing David Duke and his neo-Nazi ilk in true Trumpian fashion. That he refuses to do so, and in fact has harsher words for fellow Republican politicians like Paul Ryan, is both revealing and deeply troubling.

Finally, that America’s most prominent white supremacist spent much of his time in the national spotlight attacking Jews should dispel any doubts that American Jews can be blithely conflated with whites. As I’ve written previously:


While many so-called anti-racists on the left dismiss Jews as white and privileged, the racists never did get the memo. To Duke and his ilk, Jews are foreign contaminants in the white gene pool as much as blacks or Mexicans. This means that when anti-racists insist that Jews are white and aren’t as in need of protection as other minorities, they are really just compounding the abuse heaped upon those Jews.

To be truly committed to the cause of anti-racism, one must speak up for all those targeted by racists. Otherwise, one is not fighting racism so much as offering a scapegoat to mollify the racists.

Previous: In World’s Least Surprising Twist, David Duke Blames Melania Trump’s Plagiarism on the Jews
Yair Rosenberg is a senior writer at Tablet and the editor of the English-language blog of the Israeli National Archives. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Tablet Magazine
37 West 28th Street, 8th Floor
New York, New York 10001, United States
-------