Mondoweiss

where's the Jewish visionary of western integration?

I wonder whether Jewish culture grants too must prestige to the rich

Michael Wolff tells a weird story about American Apparel boss, Dov Charney:

Memo to Bad Jews: Time to reclaim your Jewish identity and save the world

AIPAC is all about Jewish history and power--and so is this web site

At the end of the AIPAC policy conference, maybe during Joe Biden’s pandering speech, I sat biting into a napkin trying to keep from crying with a joyful sense of purpose that the conference had given me. This post is all about that joyful feeling, and what it might mean to those who come to this site.

a few thoughts about Jewish community

What did Kafka get for his bar mitzvah?

Kafka didn't know that bar mitzvahs took place on Saturday

This morning I read a Kafka letter from 1923, a year before he died, in which he apologized to his good friend Oskar Baum for missing his son’s bar mitzvah because he did not realize it was on a Saturday. "Only yesterday I learned--and should have known all my life... that the ceremony can only take place on a Saturday." Kafka had been bar mitzvahed himself, 27 years before, but he had obviously never set foot in a synagogue in years.
The misunderstanding demonstrates how different Jewish identity was in Europe then from what it is today. No one would ever deny that Kafka was Jewish. He was as Jewish as they come. Almost all his friends were Jewish, he read Jewish publications, he spoke of being Jewish constantly as the central condition of his social/political and even economic existence. It is true that his uncle was a Catholic convert and one of his great loves, Milena Jesenska, was a Catholic. But conversion held no temptation to him. 
In his ultra-sensitive way, Kafka saw that Jews were bringing Europe into modernity and that Europe was reacting to it. 

scene from an intermarriage

Saban called himself 'right wing crazy' on foreign policy

My assimilationist reputation

The other day I went on the New Republic site and saw some commenters dismissing me as an assimilationist Jew in connection with criticisms I’d made about the Gaza War. I’m not sure why my Jewish identity should affect the reception of my statements about Gaza, but so be it; this is part of my reputation. My assimilationism is a subject I haven't visited in a while. A few thoughts: