Jarrod Tanny
By Jarrod Tanny
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Opinion Of Course Birthright Is One-Sided. That’s What Makes It Great.
In 1987, my Jewish day school wanted me to experience what it means to be Israeli, to appreciate the labor of the Zionist pioneers who had returned home after 2,000 years in exile to till the soil and live under the perpetual threat of violent Arabs out to destroy our Holy Land. So I spent…
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Opinion If You’re Only Calling Out Anti-Semitism On One Side, You’re Enabling It.
On Friday, November 16, Linda Sarsour accused American Jewry of dual loyalty, thereby inscribing herself into the registry of vicious anti-Semitic discourse. I write these words with hesitation and with little joy, for Sarsour has an impressive resumé of activism when it comes to laudable domestic causes. She has contributed much to the chipping away…
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Letters No, American Zionism Is Not Apathetic
Last month on the pages of The Forward I claimed the right to be a liberal Zionist in America, one who feels a deep connection with Israel, one who continues to envision a democratic Jewish state that exists alongside a free and independent Palestine — but also one who recognizes that a half-century after the…
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Opinion Think Ashkenazi Jews Are White? Ask An Anti-Semite.
I was eight years old when I first experienced anti-Semitism. I was at Disney World with my family in the gift shop. I asked the sales clerk how much something cost, and then I tried to bargain with her. She immediately responded, as if on instinct, “well it looks like we have a little Jew…
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Letters Liberal American Jews Have A Right To Celebrate Israel
In their response to my recent piece, “The Loneliness of the Liberal Zionist,” Harry Reis and Yoav Schaefer have argued that Israel bears responsibility for the decline (if not death) of liberal Zionism as a viable future path for the Jewish state. Because of five decades of occupation, unremitting settlement expansion beyond the Green Line,…
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Opinion The Loneliness Of The Liberal Zionist
To be a “liberal Zionist” in the United States is to lead a lonely existence. It often means having few friends, aside from other liberal Zionists. It means you support the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their historic homeland while simultaneously supporting progressive causes in your American homeland. It means wanting to…
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Culture Why I’ll Be Teaching Both ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’ And This Harvey Weinstein Essay
Jewish humor, like all ethnic humor, is built upon stereotypes, and these stereotypes can often be found in anti-Semitic discourse. There is a fine line between ethnic comedy and outright bigotry, and its reception depends as much on context as on authorial intent. Ever since the early 1960s, when Lenny Bruce went public with his…
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Culture I Survived Teaching Jewish Studies in North Carolina
I teach Jewish history in North Carolina, a land haunted by Jesus Christ. It is a land where the present is the biblical past. It is a land where the Second Coming is apparently coming any moment now. It is a land where devout Christians are eager to share the good news. It is a…
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