{"id":75304,"date":"2015-09-24T13:50:15","date_gmt":"2015-09-24T21:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=75304"},"modified":"2015-09-24T13:50:36","modified_gmt":"2015-09-24T21:50:36","slug":"jews-against-themselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=75304","title":{"rendered":"Jews Against Themselves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gabriel Schoenfeld writes<\/a>: J Street is an organization that describes itself as \u201cpro-Israel\u201d and proclaims itself \u201cdevoted and committed to Israel\u2019s future.\u201d Yet, as Edward Alexander observes in an important new book, J Street \u201cmisses no opportunities to blacken Israel\u2019s reputation and very few opportunities to encourage campaigns to delegitimize it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And J Street is not alone. Similar Jewish organizations, some without J Street\u2019s pretensions to Zionist commitment, have been proliferating in recent years both here and abroad. In the United States, they include, among others, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews against the Occupation, Jews for Free Palestine, Jews for Justice in the Middle East, and a multitude of local chapters, offshoots, and branches.<\/p>\n

In Jews against Themselves, Alexander takes up the curious and disturbing phenomenon of his volume\u2019s title. A professor emeritus at the University of Washington, Alexander is a distinguished student of American and English literature and an essayist whose erudition is ornamented by a coruscating wit. Among his highly regarded books is The Jewish Idea and Its Enemies (1988), an examination of the various intellectual strands\u2014liberalism, rationalism, relativism\u2014that, emerging from the Enlightenment, have long been in tension with, or in outright opposition to, central tenets of the Jewish tradition.<\/p>\n

In Jews against Themselves, Alexander engages in a related project but one that entails turning over a rock. His inquiry examines the disfiguring yet critical subject of Jews who defame their own people. Over the centuries, Alexander writes, there has been \u201cfruitful interaction\u201d between Jewish apostates and the world\u2019s anti-Semites, making for a distinctive Jewish contribution to \u201cthe politics and ideology of anti-Semitism\u201d itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gabriel Schoenfeld writes: J Street is an organization that describes itself as \u201cpro-Israel\u201d and proclaims itself \u201cdevoted and committed to Israel\u2019s future.\u201d Yet, as Edward Alexander observes in an important new book, J Street \u201cmisses no opportunities to blacken Israel\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[605],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-semitism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t