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.
There’s something deeply symbolic about the fact that the most successful Jewish presidential candidate in U.S. history dropped out of the race on the eve of Passover, our people’s holiday of liberation. And that he’s dropping out at a time when recent news has proven him more correct about our politics than ever before. On…
BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article I’ve slid back into old habits over the past two weeks. I struggle with obsessive hand and body washing, as a way of coping with past sexual trauma. My body feels polluted and tainted, and I wash it obsessively to provide some momentary relief from these feelings. At…
This pandemic is going to change us. It’s going to radicalize my generation. It has to radicalize us. I’m a millennial, born roughly in the middle of the millennial generation as defined by demographers. This means one of the first formative events of my childhood was the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, followed by the…
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always felt like my body was wrong. It isn’t a feeling that I should be inhabiting a body of a different gender or size or shape — not exactly. It’s more of a feeling that my skin is a cage trapping me inside of it, and I…
Despite his promise this afternoon that he will continue to fight for the nomination, the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign died last night. He may soldier on and win one or two more states before this is all done. But the competition is done. Unless something totally unexpected happens, Joe Biden will be the 2020 Democratic…
“We don’t want Sanders at AIPAC. We don’t want him in Israel.” When Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, made that fiery statement to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Sunday, he sounded like he was trying to cast Vermont Senator and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders out of the Jewish community…
There was a very Jewish moment at last night’s Democratic debate in South Carolina. Moderator Major Garrett asked Senator Bernie Sanders to defend his decision not to attend the AIPAC 2020 conference, and to reassure American Jews who might feel nervous or insulted. In response, Sanders reminded the audience of his Jewish identity and of…
After sailing to victory in Saturday’s Nevada caucus, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has emerged as the clear frontrunner in the race for the democratic presidential nomination. It’s a historic moment for American Jews; Sanders is the first Jew to get this far. But American Jewish voters could hardly be more divided over his success. For…
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