On the Nose

A broad spectrum of the American left agrees that the existing political system is not working—that it is dysfunctional, corrupt, anti-majoritarian, and utterly unable to address the serious economic, social, and ecological crises confronting the public. But despite pervasive exhaustion with the status quo, and despite omnipresent warnings about a looming constitutional threat from the radical right, there have been few signs of mobilization for a full-scale left-wing revolution since the 2020 uprisings against racism and police violence after the murder of George Floyd. Today, America’s most liberal cities have largely doubled down on carceralism, and the right has far more insurgent energy than the left. To discuss the dog that isn’t barking, David Klion spoke with Mike Duncan—the creator of the popular podcast Revolutions, which examines the history of ten historical upheavals in great detail—about what makes America in 2022 different from France in 1789 or Russia in 1917, and what it would take to see a real revolution.

Books, Articles, TV Shows, and Podcasts Mentioned:

Mike Duncan’s Revolutions and History of Rome podcasts

The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan

Hero of Two Worlds by Mike Duncan

The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James

“The Institutionalist: Dianne Feinstein’s Long Fight for Abortion and Gun Control” by Rebecca Traister 

“Mike Duncan Takes on the Turmoil of History” by David Klion 

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

The killing of the beloved Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot by Israeli forces while covering an IDF raid of occupied Jenin on May 11th, has sparked massive outcry in Palestine and widespread condemnation from the international community—as did the subsequent attack on her funeral procession by Israeli police. Though Abu Akleh, a veteran correspondent for Al Jazeera, was a singular figure, her death is only the latest reminder that Israel has routinely targeted journalists and civilians, sustaining its impunity through obfuscation in the media and the routine dehumanization of Palestinians. Jewish Currents fellow Dylan Saba speaks with political scientist Dana El Kurd and activist Fadi Quran about Israeli media strategy, shifting public opinion outside the region, and the discursive and strategic challenges faced by the Palestine solidarity movement. 

Topics Mentioned:

“New evidence suggests Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in targeted attack by Israeli forces” - CNN

“Behind the lens: Remembering Muhammad al-Durrah, 20 years on” by Talal Abu Rahma

“On This Day: Stern Gang assassinates UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948” by Aaron Reich

Twitter thread by Fadi Quran on the pattern of Israeli obfuscation following an attack

“Secret Israeli Report Reveals Armed Drone Kills Four Boys Playing on Gaza Beach in 2014” by Robert Mackey

Noa Tishby invoking antisemitism regarding the response to Shireen’s death

Israeli military spokesperson saying the press is “armed with cameras”

“You Cannot Unsee This Image,” an interview with Rashid Khalidi by Dylan Saba

“Key Messages from the Oppressed” by Dana El Kurd

Since the launch of the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and the collapse of the Oslo Peace Process in the early aughts, the college campus has been a locus of American political conflict over Israel/Palestine. As student Palestine solidarity activists have attempted to introduce BDS resolutions across the country, Israel advocacy organizations have responded by building a vast organizing infrastructure to intervene in student debates about Israel, painting campuses as threatening and hostile places for Jewish students and pushing for greater restrictions on pro-Palestine student speech. In only the latest example, members of the NYU law school’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter—half of them Jewish—are facing media defamation for a statement the group sent to the law school listserv. How does it transform campus activism and the experience of individual students when outside organizations and media commentators get involved? Is it misleading to frame these conflicts as simply a fight between two opposing camps? What do you do when your mom forwards you Bari Weiss’s substack? Jewish Currents Editor-in-Chief Arielle Angel, Assistant Editor Mari Cohen, and Contributing Editor Joshua Leifer discuss these questions and the recent NYU events with Dylan Saba, Jewish Currents fellow and Palestine Legal staff attorney. 

Books and Articles Mentioned:

“To the Antisemites Who Sit Next to Me in School” by Tal Fortgang  

“NYU Law Erupts In Controversy Over Alleged Anti-Semitism” by David Lat 

“Who’s Trying to Kill BDS on Campus? An Interview with Josh Nathan-Kazis” by Rachel Cohen 

“How Israel Advocates Shut Down a Union’s Motion to Endorse BDS” by Isaac Scher

Twitter exchange between Yehuda Kurtzer and Joshua Leifer 

AJC’s Survey on American Jewish Millennials 

“Everybody Hates the Jews” by Bari Weiss  

“Does Everybody Really Hate the Jews?” by Mari Cohen 

“Princeton Students Voted to Boycott Machinery Used by Israel. Proponents of Israel Are Countering with Misinformation” by Isaac Scher

“Maccabee Games” by Jess Schwalb

“Deborah Lipstadt vs. ‘The Oldest Hatred’” by Mari Cohen   

“American University Muslim student group withdraws from interfaith seder with Hillel over its Israel support” by Andrew Lapin

“Donor yanks Israel Studies endowment at U of Washington over professor’s Israel criticism” by Andrew Lapin 

“US Media Talks A Lot About Palestinians—Just Without Palestinians” by Maha Nassar

“Waging Lawfare” by Natasha Roth-Rowland

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

Life in Israel/Palestine is always characterized by a high level of violence; for instance, Israel’s control of millions of stateless Palestinians in the West Bank who live without due process under military law is inherently violent. But recent weeks have seen a surge in violence: Palestinians from both the West Bank and Israel proper have attacked and in some cases killed Israeli civilians and soldiers, and Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers have attacked and in some cases killed Palestinian civilians. With the unusual confluence of the holidays of Ramadan, Easter, and Passover, many worry that the violence will grow, and even spiral into the kind of massive bloodshed that unfolded last spring. (Since this episode was recorded on April 13th, tensions have escalated further as Israeli police attacked worshipers at the Al-Aqsa mosque, and Israel bombed Gaza in response to a Hamas rocket.) On this episode, Editor-at-Large Peter Beinart speaks with political scientist Dana El Kurd and attorney Daniel Seidemann about why violence is rising now, shifting Palestinian public opinion on violent and nonviolent resistance, and what the coming weeks may bring.

Books and Articles Mentioned:

“Support for Violent vs. Non-violent Strategies in the Palestinian Territories” by Dana El Kurd (April 15th, 2022) 

“Key Messages from the Oppressed” by Dana El Kurd (April 6th, 2022) 

“IDF Intelligence Chief: Palestinian Despair, Frustration Are Among Reasons for Terror Wave”  by Barak Ravid (November 3rd, 2015) 

“Hamas Breaks Out of its Gaza Cage” by Amjad Iraqi (May 21st, 202)1 

“Poll Finds Dramatic Rise in Palestinian Support for Hamas” by Joseph Krauss (June 15th, 2021)

“The End of Nonviolent Resistance” by Isaac Scher (April 12th, 2022)

“​​Israel Imposes Sanctions on Jenin, the West Bank Hometown of Tel Aviv Terrorist” by Yaniv Kubovich and Jack Khoury (April 9th 2022) 

“It is Impossible to ‘Shrink the Conflict’” by Peter Beinart (November 11th, 2021)

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

In the month since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has become a global icon. Zelensky, who was elected in 2019 and chose to remain in his country during the assault, is Ukraine’s first Jewish president. His Jewishness, already notable given the nation’s history of antisemitism, has taken on new symbolic importance in light of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim that the assault is justified by its goal of “denazification.” Many Jews around the world, some of whose ancestors once lived in Ukraine, have come to identify with Zelensky, who embodies many of the contradictions of post-Soviet Jewishness, and whose attempts to lobby on behalf of his nation—including in a recent speech before the Israeli Knesset—have highlighted questions about the politics of post-Soviet Holocaust memory. On today’s episode, Newsletter Editor David Klion speaks with a panel of writers and contributors to the new Soviet Issue of Jewish Currents—Julia Alekseyeva, Linda Kinstler, and Helen Betya Rubinstein—about Zelensky’s Jewishness and the meaning of Jewish identity in post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine.

Books, Articles, TV Shows, and Podcasts Mentioned:

The Soviet Issue of Jewish Currents

“Travesty Show: An Illustrated Correspondence” by Nicholas Muellner and Helen Betya Rubinstein

Servant of the People

“Our Oligarch” by David Klion

“The Many Oblivions of Babi Yar” by Linda Kinstler

Soviet Daughter: A Graphic Revolution by Julia Alekseyeva

Revolutions podcast

“Is Ukraine’s top presidential candidate Jewish? Even his spokesman won’t comment” by Julie Masis

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a new wave of executive and legislative attacks on trans people and abortion rights across the country. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott issued a directive for the state to treat gender-affirming care for trans youth as child abuse; Idaho passed a six-week abortion ban, and a bill prohibiting gender-affirming care for trans children passed in the House before being killed in the Senate; a proposed bill in Missouri attempts to prevent people from seeking abortions in other states. The growing anti-trans movement seems to be drawing from the same playbook as the anti-abortion movement, as the American right is forcefully pushing both agendas. To understand these alarming developments, Senior Editor Ari M. Brostoff speaks with scholar Jules Gill-Peterson (author of Histories of the Transgender Child), journalist Meaghan Winter (author of All Politics Is Local), and reproductive justice advocate Laurie Bertram Roberts (executive director of the Yellowhammer Fund) about the relationship between the anti-trans and anti-abortion movements and strategies for resistance.

Books and Articles Mentioned:

“The Anti-Trans Lobby’s Real Agenda” by Jules Gill-Peterson

Cruel Optimism by Lauren Berlant

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

In January, n+1 Books released Missing Time, the debut essay collection by Senior Editor Ari M. Brostoff, which includes pieces originally published in Jewish Currents, n+1, and elsewhere. The titular essay reads Brostoff’s preteen passion for the supernatural police procedural The X-Files alongside their nascent political consciousness, as they became a young communist (and then ex-communist). Tracing the relationship between the original run and the 2016 and 2018 reboots, the piece considers the gap between two recent historical epochs, when history seemed to stall and then sputter back to life. In the years since the essay’s initial publication and the show’s conclusion, more and more evidence of real-life UFOs has come to light, with the US government admitting last year that it can’t account for these phenomena—or rule out extraterrestrial explanations. To celebrate the release of their book, Brostoff spoke with Editor-in-Chief Arielle Angel and Managing Editor Nathan Goldman—two recently converted X-Files fanatics—about the show’s political potential, the nature of belief, and whether aliens are real.

Books, Articles, and TV Episodes Mentioned:

Missing Time: Essays by Ari M. Brostoff

“Missing Time” by Ari M. Brostoff

Missing Time: A Documented Study of UFO Abductions by Budd Hopkins

“Aubrey,” The X-Files

“Excelsis Dei,” The X-Files

“The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat,” The X-Files

“Jose Chung’s From Outer Space,” The X-Files

“2 Navy Airmen and an Object That ‘Accelerated Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen’” by Helene Cooper, Leslie Kean, and Ralph Blumenthal

“Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program” by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean

UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record by Leslie Kean

“U.S. Has No Explanation for Unidentified Objects and Stops Short of Ruling Out Aliens” by Julian E. Barnes

“How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously” by Gideon Lewis-Kraus

“I’ve seen the saucers: Obama weighs in as US interest in UFOs rises” by Adam Gabbatt

Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens by John Mack

Arielle’s Shabbat Reading List recommendation of The X-Files

“In the sky! A bird? A plane? A … UFO?” by Jon Hilkevitch

 “UFO report stirs believers, skeptics” by Jon Hilkevitch

“Berkshires UFO,” Unsolved Mysteries

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

A number of recent incidents—from a fracas over Whoopi Goldberg’s comments about the role of race in the Holocaust to a smear campaign launched against Tema Smith, the Anti-Defamation League’s new Director of Jewish Outreach—have highlighted the continued prevalence of anti-Black racism in the American Jewish community and its ongoing exclusion of Black Jews. In this episode, Contributing Writer Rebecca Pierce brought together Black Jewish artists and activists—Yiddish-language performer Anthony Russell, visual artist and organizer Reuben Telushkin, and kohenet and social worker Shoshana Brown—to discuss the policing of Jewish communal space, racism and labor in Jewish organizations, and alternative visions for Black Jewish politics and worlds.

PROJECTS MENTIONED:

My Own Personal Robeson/The House We Live In, Anthony Russell

Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner’s recent remake of West Side Story sought to bring the musical into the 21st century by updating its flat, stereotypical depictions of Puerto Ricans. In response, Puerto Rican critics have revived a long-running discussion about the musical’s enduring shadow, which some argue has harmed the community as a primary site of "Puerto Rican" representation, written and directed by white men. This time, however, filmmaker, writer, and scholar Frances Negrón-Muntaner, who has been at the forefront of this conversation for decades, found herself accused of antisemitism for daring to criticize the classic musical. What was going on? As the theater historian Brian E. Herrera has observed, West Side Story has two “parallel histories”: as “masterpiece musical and racializing performance.” That parallel also emerges in the different relationships that Jews and Latinx people bring to the work: West Side Story was the work of four gay Jews—Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, and Stephen Sondheim—and has been held up intracommunally as a paragon of Jewish cultural achievement. Editor-in-chief Arielle Angel spoke with Negrón-Muntaner, Herrera, and writer and scholar Daniel Pollack-Pelzner about the parallel resonances of West Side Story in Jewish and Latinx communities, and the tensions that emerge over questions of power and control.

Books and Articles Mentioned:

"Feeling Pretty: West Side Story and Puerto Rican Identity Discourses" by Frances Negrón-Muntaner

"Compiling West Side Story’s Parahistories, 1949–2009" by Brian Eugenio Herrera

"Why West Side Story Abandoned Its Queer Narrative" by Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics by José Esteban Muñoz

"Let ‘West Side Story’ and Its Stereotypes Die" by Carina del Valle Schorske

"West Side Story Can’t Be Saved" by Andrea González-Ramírez

"The Great 'West Side Story' Debate," The New York Times 

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

On Saturday, January 15th, a British national named Malik Faisal Akram entered Congregation Beth Israel, a Reform synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, and held Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and three congregants hostage at gunpoint. Akram demanded the release of Aafia Siddiqui, who is serving an 86-year prison sentence for allegedly shooting at US FBI agents and army personnel. Akram released one hostage after six hours, and the nearly 12-hour crisis finally ended when the remaining hostages escaped and FBI agents and police entered the synagogue and killed Akram. This disturbing incident activated many American Jews’ feelings of vulnerability—especially heightened since the 2018 attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh—while also provoking Islamophobic responses and reigniting an ongoing debate about synagogue security. In this episode, recorded the Tuesday after the Colleyville attack, Editor-in-Chief Arielle Angel, Managing Editor Nathan Goldman, Senior Reporter Alex Kane, and Assistant Editor Mari Cohen discuss their immediate reactions to the event and the questions it raises.

Note: This discussion cites a statement from someone claiming to be a former Beth Israel congregant who said he left the synagogue because he wasn’t allowed to bring guns into services. After the episode was recorded, Rabbi Cytron-Walker told JTA that Beth Israel permits concealed carry and said that he wished one of the congregants had been carrying during the attack.

Books, Articles, Tweets, and Podcasts Mentioned:

“Fears of Government Surveillance Complicate Muslim Groups’ Access to Federal Security Funding” by Mari Cohen

“Texas synagogue attack invites debate over delay in confirmation of special envoy on antisemitism” by Jacob Kornbluh

“On Antisemitism Fought” by Judah Bernstein

On the Nose episode: “Rallies, Surveys, and Ice Cream”

“Renowned Jewish Historian: ‘Stop Using the Term ‘Antisemitism’’” by Ofer Aderet

“Away from a Definition of Antisemitism: An Essay in the Semantics of Historical Description” by David Engel (from Rethinking European Jewish History) 

“For Jews, Going to Services Is an Act of Courage” by Deborah E. Lipstadt

Twitter thread by Ma Nishtana

“Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement” by Michael German

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”