Joel S.

Notable that even in his supposed paean to Israeli democracy, Ambassador Huckabee is defining "Israeli" in such a way so as to exclude Arab citizens of Israel.

I won't say the Israeli election results today don't matter. But a society where millions of people living under the government's rule are denied citizenship and cannot vote is not meaningfully "democratic." Which is why the only ethical thing for Israeli Jews to do is to vote for an Arab party.

I'm not holding my breath for the ADL to comment on this "the Jewish guy is paying protesters" trope.

I'm guessing it would really easy to convince RFK Jr. that our schools are teaching Arabic numerals in a nefarious plot to introduce Sharia to the US.

Obviously this is racist and gross, but it's also shockingly historically illiterate? No one who has taken a single high school world history course would deny that Arab culture has produced incredible science and literature. This is why we need basic humanities education.

In this cultural moment, we simultaneously believe university professorships have so much cultural cachet that they should be given as rewards to people distinguished in other fields, but also that the actual professoriate can be hollowed out, underinvested, and turned into a parade of adjuncts.

I mostly liked this essay a lot, even if I thought it was a bit unfair to Gershom Scholem. jewishcurrents.org/visions-of-t...

Here is the Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs, spreading the antisemitic conspiracy theory that the Soros family are the puppet masters behind the election in Brazil yesterday. The Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs seems to see it as his job to make the Diaspora less safe.

Too many American Jewish organizations will not call out the blatant antisemitism of a non-Jewish president saying that Jews are being "disloyal" if they vote for Abdul El-Sayed. I am so grateful we have this organization that will.

Right-wing nationalist arguments about Jews in majority non-Jewish polities have moved from "we can't trust them if they prioritize the Jewish nation above the nation where they live" to "we can't trust them if they don't do that." www.jta.org/2026/10/26/u...

I keep reading this framing that Israeli citizens are required to be in Israel physically to cast their vote, and it misses something significant: Israeli citizens in the occupied West Bank are not, in fact, required to be in Israel to vote. Absentee voting for some, but not others.

"Leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee Which stated that the people Had squandered the confidence of the government And could only win it back By redoubled work. Would it not in that case Be simpler for the government To dissolve the people And elect another?" -Bertolt Brecht

There is a lot going on here.

Nationalists, Europe, 1926: "Jews cannot be good members of the polity if they have loyalty to the Jewish nation above the nation where they live." Nationalists, USA, 2026: "Jews cannot be good members of the polity if they do *not* have loyalty to the Jewish nation, first and foremost."

This is an explicit demand for American Jews to have dual loyalties, a classic antisemitic trope. And none of the major groups that claim to defend American Jews against antisemitism will say so, because they've decided protecting Israel from criticism is more important. www.jta.org/2026/10/26/u...

Listen, I am ashamed of myself, but not for that reason. www.timesofisrael.com/trump-says-j...

I mean this is wrong but it’s also not wrong.

Non-Jews telling Jews that they are doing their Jewish identities inauthentically if they have the "wrong" politics is in fact textbook antisemitism. But somehow I'm not holding my breath for the ADL to weigh in on this one, because it would require them to acknowledge many Jews support El-Sayed.

Lander just wanted to defend Palestinians harvesting olives, a basic right, and the state of Israel attacked him by name for it. Which Jews are throwing which under the bus here?

“On Thursday, the long-running Harvard Youth Poll found for the first time in its history that more young Americans expect to fall behind, rather than surpass, their parents economically.” www.nytimes.com/2026/10/25/n...

Finally, some actual good news in the world for once. apnews.com/article/serb...

Everything is and always will be gender.

Certainly can't imagine this would ever need to be an unlimited edition.

I keep seeing headlines about attempts to steal elections in Georgia, and I keep having to read past the headline to see if they’re talking about the country or the state.

Anti-Black racism in New York is something that needs to be confronted, and it is reasonable to expect the mayor to have a plan to confront it, and also, there is absolutely no reason to define it as opposed to fighting antisemitism, which is also part of the mayor's responsibility.

The time of emotionally detached, over-intellectualized, unkempt Jewish men is upon us. www.cnn.com/2026/10/23/e...

I hate that I have an actual professional obligation to know where "goyslop" comes from, but as a Jewish Studies professor who teaches a lot of extremely online students who spend a lot of time in lefty internet spaces, I get asked about this sort of thing regularly, and I have to historicize it.

This is one of the larger left-of-center Facebook pages, and I do feel like a few years ago, left-of-center people on social media with large audiences were not using terms like “goyslop”?

The time of emotionally detached, over-intellectualized, unkempt Jewish men is upon us. www.cnn.com/2026/10/23/e...

This is collective punishment, which is expressly prohibited under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_ent...

The Bavarian government is saying they are going to restore this site, and maybe there are valid historical reasons to do that, but please, can we not reopen the Alpine restaurant that was there? www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

I hope this is a promising sign of the next few years to come.

There might never be a better song for this time of year than this one: www.youtube.com/watch?v=38iy...

The Israeli government is now ethnically cleansing Hebron, as part of a larger push to expel every Palestinian from the land. www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_ent...

It doesn't make up for everything else the internet has done to us, but the amount of music I have ready access to and can explore now, compared to when I was a kid, is pretty amazing.

This is not an unfortunate byproduct of MAGA politics. This is the entire goal.

Richard Dawkins: For when you want to demonstrate that it is possible to define your thinking as "anti-dogmatic" to the point where you become every bit as dogmatic and close-minded as any of the people you've ever criticized.

Really fascinating story here: www.jta.org/2026/10/23/s...

Supporting this legislation is the bare minimum that needs to be expected of anyone who earnestly supports a two-state solution. Anyone who says they support a two-state solution but opposes this legislation is just using it to avoid the apartheid present. www.jns.org/news/u-s-new...

We're getting a far-right France, and we have to deal with that fact.

I will say again: The divide in the Jewish community is not between Zionists and anti-Zionists, it's between people who view the Occupation as an unacceptable moral atrocity and these who view it as an inconvenience to be managed.

The age of Trump has made me more small-c conservative in some senses, insofar as I have come to believe cultivation of standards of decorum rooted in restraining some impulses is actually important for public life. But that's a form of conservatism that makes me more alienated by MAGA than ever.

We need to crush these people to restore a basic sense that moral behavior actually means anything at all. That is what is at stake here.

“May” is doing a lot of work here.

"Reading books is active resistance" is something I tell to my students every day.