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.
Despite the fact that Wednesday’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas was the first debate to feature both Jewish presidential contenders, the word “Jewish” was not mentioned once. On top of that, neither Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders nor former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg took the opportunity to discuss their very different relationships to their…
Perhaps nothing represents the strange duality of the place of Jews in the United States in 2020 than the fact that a Jew may well have won the Iowa Democratic caucuses — and he did it with very little support from actual Jewish voters. Though the massive debacle that was the caucuses means we don’t…
This past week, the Super PAC Democratic Majority for Israel began running ads in Iowa attacking Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as polls showed him tied with Joe Biden in the lead for the Iowa Democratic caucus. The group, which has said it is “deeply disturbing” that Sanders has “surrogates and endorsers who hate Israel,…
This week, President Trump invited Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his chief political rival, Kachol Lavan leader Benny Gantz, to come to the White House next week for the release of his administration’s long-awaited Israel-Palestine plan. This “peace plan” (and I use the term loosely) promises to accelerate a long-delayed reckoning with what it means…
Over the past week, President Trump took two decisive actions related to American Jews. At first glance, one of these actions seems to be anti-Semitic, while the other appears to be supportive of American Jews. Yet taken together, both reinforce the same impression — that President Trump does not quite believe that American Jews are…
Over the past week, two stories broke about anti-Semitism on university campuses that seemed to reinforce the prevailing narrative about such things — that there is an explosion of anti-Semitic action at North American institutions of higher learning. But these stories have a lot less in common than it seems, and their misrepresentation goes a…
Michael Bloomberg’s official entry into the crowded contest for the Democratic nomination for president means, among other things, that we have two serious contenders who are Jewish, a first in American history: Mayor Bloomberg and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. And though they are practically the same age and share a common history, they are two…
This time of year, during the High Holidays, there are a few things that non-Orthodox American Jews can reliably depend upon. In the days leading up to Yom Kippur, lots of us will complain about having to go without food for a day, and we’ll make jokes about Jews being the people “chosen to suffer.”…
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