Joel Swanson is a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago, where he studies and teaches undergraduate courses on modern Jewish intellectual history. He teaches, speaks and writes widely on Jewish history and politics, for both academic and journalistic sources.
On Tuesday evening, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden announced his pick for vice president: California Senator Kamala Harris. While that was going on, Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was in the process of winning her primary. The two women pose starkly different versions of the Democratic Party, especially when it comes to Israel. Harris is a…
The results of two Democratic primaries yesterday spell out an important message, not just for American politics but for American Jews. The victories of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Black Lives Matter activist Cori Bush of Missouri, both of whom have voiced support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel, will force…
Few millennial Jews have the ability to capture the Jewish cultural conversation the way Seth Rogen does. And this week, he used that influence to show the Jewish establishment why it can’t keep pretending that young Jews who reject Zionism and the state of Israel are relegated to a tiny, insignificant fringe of the community….
This article is part of a new series called “On Persuasion.” We asked thought leaders to consider what persuasion means to them. What works in terms of persuading people? Is it moot in 2020? What is the Jewish value of persuasion? Should we be opening our minds to other points of view, or closing them…
The Jews don’t agree on much these days. Our community is divided by Trump, by Israel, by questions of religious observance. But you would think that if there were one thing we could all agree upon, it would be that members of far-right military orders linked to the Nazis are bad and should be condemned….
Earlier today, New York Times columnist Bari Weiss resigned from the paper of record. Weiss, who has written extensively about anti-Semitism and Jewish issues, announced her resignation in a blistering letter condemning The Times for supposedly adopting an ideologically homogeneous left-wing political orthodoxy, in which “Twitter has become its ultimate editor” and “the paper itself…
On Friday, President Trump rang in Fourth of July weekend with a speech and fireworks display at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, a stark contrast with the large number of fireworks displays that were canceled across the rest of the country due to the coronavirus pandemic. Though the Rushmore celebration attracted much attention for the…
This is one of many pieces The Forward is running on annexation. Read another point of view here and here. We’ve entered a new era in terms of the relationship American Jews have with the community organizations that claim to represent us. Last Tuesday, powerful long-time New York Congressional representative Eliot Engel, chairman of the…
100% of profits support our journalism
