On March 18, Foer will talk about the duvet story at Sixth & I, in Washington, D.C.; the dialog can even be streamed on-line
For The Atlantic’s April cowl story, “The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending,” workers author Franklin Foer experiences on how the rise of anti-Semitism on each the proper and the left threatens to finish an period of unprecedented security and prosperity for Jewish Individuals, one which spanned the latter a part of the twentieth century. Foer argues that, with the primary a long time of the twenty first century marked by conspiracy, reckless hyperbole, and political violence, the liberal order that Jewish Individuals helped set up, rooted in values of tolerance, equity, meritocracy, and cosmopolitanism, is being demolished.
The rise of anti-Semitism on the political proper is nicely documented, with Donald Trump attracting the allegiance of white supremacists and freely borrowing their tropes. Foer experiences from the Bay Space on the anti-Semitism that has unfold on the American left since Hamas’s assault on Israel on October 7, 2023. He writes that the model of anti-Zionism adopted in some corners of the modern left “doesn’t cease with requires an finish to the occupation of the West Financial institution. It espouses a blithe want to get rid of the world’s solely Jewish-majority nation, valorizes the homicidal marketing campaign towards its existence, and seeks to carry members of the Jewish diaspora to account for the sins of a rustic they don’t dwell in and for a authorities they didn’t elect. In so doing, this faction of the left locations itself within the horrible lineage of makes an attempt to erase Jewry—and, in flip, stirs historical and not-so-ancient existential fears.”
Foer explores how these ascendant political actions on either side of the political spectrum are allotting with the beliefs of tolerance and pluralism, and changing them with intolerance and even violence. Foer writes, “Extremist thought and mob habits have by no means been good for Jews. And what’s dangerous for Jews, it may be argued, is dangerous for America.”
Foer’s article describes intimately the golden age that Jewish writers, filmmakers, musicians, and intellectuals helped create after World Struggle II: “As anti-Semitism light, American Jewish civilization exploded in a rush of creativity. For a time, the good Jewish novel—books by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, and Bernard Malamud, inflected with Yiddish and references to pickled herring—was the good American novel. Underneath the affect of Lenny Bruce, Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks, Elaine Might, Gilda Radner, Woody Allen, and lots of others, American comedy appropriated the Jewish joke, and the ironic sensibility contained inside, as its personal.” Foer writes that Jews created new genres of Americana and in flip remade America’s picture of itself, with “the people revival popularized by Bob Dylan, Artwork Garfunkel, and Paul Simon; the flicks mythologizing the decency of the American Everyman produced by David O. Selznick, Louis B. Mayer, and Jack Warner.”
This all ended on September 11, 2001, Foer argues: “It didn’t appear that manner on the time. However the terror assaults opened an period of perpetual disaster, which turned fertile soil the place the hatred of Jews took root.” Foer continues, “Within the period of perpetual disaster, a model of this narrative saved recurring: a small elite—typically bankers, typically lobbyists—maliciously exploiting the individuals. Such narratives helped propel Occupy Wall Road on the left and the Tea Get together on the proper. This model of populist revolt had lengthy been the stuff of Jewish nightmares.”
Foer writes in his conclusion, “When anti-Semitism takes maintain, conspiracy principle hardens into standard knowledge, embedding violence in thought after which in lethal motion. A society that holds its Jews at arm’s size is more likely to be extra intent on searching down scapegoats than addressing underlying defects. Though it’s hardly an iron regulation of historical past, such societies are susceptible to say no … If America persists on its present course, it will be the tip of the Golden Age not only for the Jews, however for the nation that nurtured them.”
“The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending” revealed right this moment in The Atlantic. There shall be an occasion to debate the duvet on March 18 at Sixth & I, in Washington, D.C., and on-line, with Foer joined in dialog by Yolanda Savage-Narva, the vp of racial fairness, range, and inclusion for the Union for Reform Judaism, and others, in a dialogue led by Sixth & I’s Senior Rabbi, Aaron Potek. Tickets can be found through Sixth & I right here.
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