The Totenkopf is Part of Platner's Appeal

A new poll out of the University of New Hampshire has Graham Platner opening up a giant lead over Gov. Janet Mills (64/25) in the Democratic primary to challenge Maine Senator Susan Collins. Platner also leads Collins by a greater margin than does Mills.

It's a startling show of resiliency from a man whose campaign seemed DOA once it was revealed he had gotten a big ol' Nazi tattoo on his chest. And lest we think that was some sort of one-off, just today Platner boosted the message of a prominent neo-Nazi radio host when the latter identified war with Iran as "the only thing Republicans and Democrats have both given a standing ovation for" (Platner added "As always, there’s one thing that brings Republican and Democratic politicians together: sending other people’s children to die in stupid wars in the Middle East.").

As the possibility of a Platner victory, post-Totenkopf, is sinking in, we're starting to see more folks from what we might call the intelligentsia of the "insurgent" wing of the Democratic Party trying to raise the alarm on him. The line I'm hearing most often is that Platner will become "another Fetterman" -- a politician initially promoted by the populist wing of the party, whose appeal traded significantly on coding as a manly-man to Democrats desperate to shed their elitist, East Coast, alternative, intellectual, left-wing (...) image, who became one of the Democrats most likely to cross party lines and back conservative initiatives. 

It's an ironic charge, given that one of Fetterman's chief sins to this clique is that he is among the few diehard Bibi-or-bust Democrats remaining, and Platner is a loud and harsh critic of Israel. To the extent the allegation is that Platner will turn out to be an AIPAC darling, I'm dubious. But if the claim is more broadly that Platner is highly liable to align with conservative populists at the expense of Democratic priorities, it's quite plausible -- and, it must be said, quite compatible with retaining his loud and harsh anti-Israel politics. His fate is not to become Irving Kristol, but to become Tucker Carlson.

As this last-ditch rally against Platner develops, though, I've been thinking about the old "the party decides" line that people thought until too far late in the day would stop Trump from being nominated in 2016. In this case, though, "the party" I have in mind is not the organizational Democratic Party, but rather the aforementioned insurgent intelligentsia that's trying to claw back support for Platner from what is largely their own rank-and-file. They've relentlessly promoted a vision of Democratic politics that is almost entirely front-loaded into a particular aesthetic of being a "fighter", and now they've found it's spiraled out of their control. And in particular, one thing I think they still haven't wrapped their heads around is the real possibility that Platner's antisemitic associations are a selling point for him. They're not something he's had to overcome, they're part of why -- in the context of this particular "I'm a fighter, I'm tackling the powerful, I'm beholden to nobody" aesthetic -- Platner is as popular as he is.

Amanda Marcotte, for instance, uses the fact of Platner's success-notwithstanding-Nazi-ties to complain not about the Democratic branches backing Platner, but of the Democratic establishment that has aligned with Mills. "It really says a lot about how the Democratic establishment is failing to meet the moment that Platner is a contender.... Running Mills was political malpractice." The implication, here, is that Platner is only succeeding because Democrats thirsting for a true "fighter" didn't have another option other than a geriatric old biddy; they're so desperate that they'll even back the Nazi-adjacent dude if the alternatives are so poor. 

Problem #1 with this argument is that Platner was not the only alternative to Mills in the race; Marcotte's account doesn't explain why Platner specifically became the popular alternative. Problem #2 is that while Mills is certainly old, there's no evidence that she doesn't take the positions or adversarial attitude towards Republicans that we supposedly want -- her only actual sin is her age, the other problems are just imputed to her by virtue of her date of birth. Platner's ascendence is directly related to this conflation, where a "vibe" of being "fighter-ly" matters more than one's actual record, beliefs, or policies. Can we really be surprised when Platner's support is not dinged by complaints relating to his record, beliefs, and or policies? Folks are reaping what they've sown here.

Much like with conservatives and Trumpism circa 2016, it's clear that there is a substantial cadre of political professionals who thought -- quite sincerely -- that they could play with currents of populist rage but also keep them under control, in part because they assumed that of course people didn't really want overt nativism or White supremacy or antisemitism or what have you. And the problem is, it turns out that a lot of people wanted exactly that. The "party" tried to hit the brakes, and nothing happened. It was a complete misjudgment of where the center of gravity was, alongside a complete misjudgment of how intolerable pure rancid bigotry would be.

We have gone through a long, long period of certain people ranting about the DNC rigging primaries and all incumbents are bought and paid for by special interests and every Democratic leader is a spineless weasel shrinking violet ... etc., etc., onward to infinity. A lot of the "smarter" people who indulged in that rhetoric didn't mean it literally. It was a tool to harness popular rage, which they would deploy with scalpel-like precision to knock out the sclerotic old guard to be replaced by better (but still savvy) operators like themselves. The problem is that when that rhetoric sinks in far enough, it never gets deployed with scalpel-like precision. It can't. It metastasizes quickly and uncontrollably, and any effort to restrain it flops as it is perceived as yet another instance of the Big Bad "Them" trying to assert control over and squelch the true voice of the people.

And at the risk of spiking the football, of course antisemitism would be at the center of this. A central component of antisemitism is how it places Jews, in the public imagination, as the paradigm-case of the small elite class of riggers and cheaters who pull puppet-strings behind the scenes. In this light, Platner being perceived as antisemitic Jewish accentuates, rather than undermines, his appeal as someone who will fearlessly take on ... the elitist class of riggers and cheaters pulling puppet-strings behind the scenes. Couple that with the other central feature of epistemic antisemitism -- this simmering fury that there's so much that "they" won't let you say, that you're Not Allowed To Say, that we all know are true and are secretly thinking but Your Life Will Be Over if you say it -- and there is a frankly orgasmic pleasure in letting that cauldron boil over and pour out all the thoughts they've been suppressing for years that they now feel license to say. That's what we're seeing now, more than anything: an outright ecstasy amongst people who finally, finally, feel free to not care what Jews think when they think about Jews. Maybe that's why we seem to have gone from zero to ninety so fast. Once again, cf. Trump: the reason why Trump's overt bigotry didn't seem to hurt him the polls is that a lot of people wanted more than anything else to be able to say all of those horrible things, things that they'd been told and believed would destroy their lives and careers and marriages and future if they ever said out loud, and for it to be okay. When Trump said it and it didn't spike his political career, the freedom he promised -- the freedom not to care what "they" think -- was absolutely intoxicating.

Again, I absolutely believe that many of the "smart" people who promoted this sort of approach didn't mean for this to happen, and thought quite earnestly that of course they (they personally and they-the-voters) would not conflate "elitist class of cheaters" with "Jews". Nonetheless: that's exactly what happened. They misjudged the center of gravity dramatically. They underestimated the appeal of antisemitism, which they were sure was good and well-buried, and only being dredged up now as a tired refrain of a baiters and hustlers who had no other refrain to offer. They were wrong. The "hustlers" were right. And the "smart" people, once again, found they can't stop the train.

That's why I'm very pessimistic about arresting the currently accelerating antisemitic trends, particularly in a context where progressive politics are moving towards an aesthetic populism questing for whoever can provide an outlet for our seething, incandescent rage. It's not even that the rage isn't understandable -- of course it is -- but when it swallows up every other political instinct it necessarily leads to bad places (a downward spiral I'm familiar with in part because of how I've seen it afflict elements of the Jewish community dealing with Jewish anger). 

It's very clear, as Adam Serwer wrote today, that too many people (including left-identified people) are looking for an excuse "to indulge in the transgressive pleasure of public bigotry as a little treat." Platner's Nazi affiliations are exactly that sort of transgressive treat, and until we understand that they are part of his appeal for regular voters -- not Tiki-torch neo-Nazis, but ordinary Americans -- we're not going to wrap our heads around the scope of the actual problem.

Mayweather Pacquaio II Announced

Well, it's happening. Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao are set to rematch their 2015 fight, which Mayweather won by unanimous decision. The match is scheduled for September 19th in Las Vegas, and will be carried by Netflix.

Like any red-blooded boxing fan, I hate this. Mayweather (50-0, 27 KOs) and Pacquiao (62-8-3, 39 KOs) are both pushing fifty years old. To say neither is in their prime is an understatement. The fight defines soulless cash grab (and I would know). Rumors have abounded that Mayweather, in particular, has gotten into money trouble, and with the first fight grossing over $400 million dollars, this smacks of a way to get one or both gentlemen's bank account back into the black.

In terms of the fight itself -- well. After all the hype and hullabaloo surrounding the first fight, Mayweather ended up winning quite handily. And while some of that has been chalked up to Pacquiao being injured ahead of the match, I genuinely believe that in their primes and at their peak, Floyd Mayweather was a better fighter than Manny Pacquiao. I was not surprised at the outcome then, and had they run it back a year later with a fully recovered Pacquiao, I would have expected much the same result.

But as I said -- we are now nowhere near anyone's prime. And to the extent either fighter has even gestured at remaining active in the sport, it's Pacquiao. After dropping a clear decision to Yordenis Ugas in 2021, Pacquiao came back to fight Mario Barrios to a draw last year. Sure, Barrios may be someone who a prime Pacquiao would've torn apart, but he's a real fighter, not a total pushover, and Pacquaio at least could still keep up with him. Mayweather's last sanctioned fight (against Conor McGregor) was in 2017, his last fight against an actual boxer was against a basically shot Andre Berto in 2015, and his last fight against an opponent who had any chance of challenging him was ... Manny Pacquiao. Mayweather's been feasting on exhibition-circuit joke fights for a decade, but it's been a long time since he's had to do anything halfway serious in the ring.

The reality is that, while we've got some idea what this version of Manny Pacquiao has for us, we have no idea how much Floyd Mayweather Jr. has left in the tank. During his career Mayweather was known if nothing else for always being in fantastic shape. He may have liked to flash cash and showboat in the runup to fights, but he never let the distractions distract him. Is that still true at 49? Is he fully present? Is he taking this fight because he genuinely wants to be back in the ring and feels he's capable of putting on a show, or because his debts finally piled higher than his pride? (And that doesn't get into the more basic question of whether, even if Mayweather genuinely still has the hunger, is his body still there?)

I'm not interested in this fight. As a boxing fan, it offends me that the most attention our sport gets are these senior circuit tours and whenever Jake Paul steps into the ring. Terrence Crawford deserves all the attention and money of this fight twice over.

But if there is one thing I can say in its favor, it's that I'm genuinely not confident who will win. I guess that's something.

Malinowski Warns About AIPAC Malinowski-ing Other Malinowskis

A few weeks ago, there was a shock upset in the Democratic special election primary for New Jersey's 11th congressional district. The frontrunner, former U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski, was long regarded as a pro-Israel moderate. But he faced an avalanche of AIPAC-funded opposition because he signaled willingness to condition aid to Israel.

As is AIPAC's wont, its spending against Malinowski did not generally relate to Israel -- they funded ads attacking him from the left (as allegedly pro-ICE), for instance. But the result of their intervention was perhaps unexpected -- it did not elevate a more orthodox pro-Israel contender to the top of the polls, but rather resulted in a further-left and far more Israel-critical Democrat (Analilia Mejia) surging to victory.

I've written quite a bit about this outcome on Bluesky, of which the basic summary is that AIPAC's conduct will have the effect of (and may be intended to have the effect of) squeezing out moderate pro-Israel Democrats who nonetheless find Bibi-or-bust to no longer be tenable, and the main beneficiaries of that squeeze-out will be more Squad-like progressive critics like Mejia. That AIPAC has defended its spending spree in the NJ-11 notwithstanding this result suggests that they are actually fine with sacrificing mainstream pro-Israel Democrats in favor of more sharp Israel critics. 

Why? My speculation is that someone like Malinowski represents a more immediate threat to AIPAC's monopoly over "pro-Israel" politics. A Jewish individual who is very attached to Israel, but is repulsed by the extremism that typifies the current Israeli government, is more likely to be willing to defect from AIPAC to a Malinowski type than to a Mejia. Way back in my Tablet Mag days I wrote about how Jewish conservatives had an incentive to shrink the pro-Israel tent if it meant solidifying its control over the content of that tent, and this is an example of that. So while I don't think AIPAC believes the NJ-11 outcome is a positive, exactly, it isn't as much of a negative as one might think. More than anything else, AIPAC wants to sabotage the emergence of any political movement that couples care and concern for Israel, its legitimate security needs and democratic prerogatives, with care and concern for Palestinians, their legitimate democratic aspirations and human rights entitlements.

And so my ultimate takeaway was pretty simple: "[I]f you at all think of yourself as in the lane of 'I care about Israel but they, and we, need to change course substantially to align with basic liberal values', AIPAC is your mortal enemy trying to destroy your movement." And while they "will not succeed in stemming the tide of Democrats who no longer are willing to kowtow to any and all Israeli abuses," they "may succeed ... in ensuring that the new Democrats who win elections don’t have any residual affinity for Israel at all."

Anyway, that was my perspective. But I was pleased to see today that Malinowski has published an essay suggesting he basically endorses my view.

Late last year, an AIPAC official told me that the organization was concerned by a statement I had made that the United States should make case-by-case judgements about Israeli requests for military aid, based on what is happening on the ground (a standard I would apply to all U.S. partners, including Ukraine and Taiwan). He added: “Some of our members are also concerned you’ll be influential in Congress” because of my past foreign policy experience.

The implication was that AIPAC considered a small challenge to its hard line of unconditional support for the current Israeli government from someone like me to be scarier than electing a person hostile to the very concept of Zionism, but to whom Democrats might not listen.

But if AIPAC’s definition of “pro-Israel” now demands blind a embrace of and funding for policies that even most Americans with a lifelong commitment to Israeli security cannot in good conscience support—like the violent expulsion of West Bank Palestinians from their homes—and if it requires smearing even the most moderate elected officials who ask questions about those policies, the number of Americans (and the number of members of Congress) who pass its test will be too small to sustain any kind of relationship with the Jewish state.

And he also suggests what I suggest, which is that Democrats need to be explicit in treating AIPAC as what it is -- part of the opposing MAGA coalition. 

But Democrats are not without leverage here, if they have the guts to use it. For one thing, these special interest organizations need to maintain at least the illusion of bipartisanship. AIPAC is a case in point. Its biggest donors are pro-Trump billionaires, but most of its members are Democrats. If Democratic leaders collectively were to refuse its support, instead of letting it pick off candidates one by one, AIPAC would face a crisis of identity and legitimacy. Democrats running for Senate and for president, who will have the resources to match whatever super PACs throw at them, should lead the way in rejecting endorsements and telling these groups they don’t want their help.

On that note, retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) -- another venerable Jewish Democrat occupying the pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, pro-peace lane -- has pulled her endorsement of a fellow Democrat running for a (different) Illinois House seat because she's accepted AIPAC money. It's taken a couple cycles, but AIPAC's brand is increasingly toxic amongst Democrats -- and that's a problem wholly of their own making.

Everywhere and Nowhere

Phoebe Maltz Bovy has an interesting column up on yet another "another anti-Zionist Jewish literary manifesto" that's circulating in Canadian literary spaces. 

The theme of the manifesto is a familiar one: that there is "no room in the Jewish literary establishment for work that sees Palestinians as human, their grievances as legitimate, their oppression horrific, their resistance justified." The writer presents the world as drowning in a particular sort of novel about Jews, one "lamenting the antisemitism on university campuses when that antisemitism is actually just pro-Palestinian sentiment," a superindulgence that is choking off other (better, more important) stories about Palestinian rights.

On this point, Maltz Bovy notes that the manifesto author doesn't actually cite examples of the offending books he has in mind (despite the fact that they are apparently so omnipresent that they deserve an "enough is enough" jeremiad). And then she makes an important observation, one that I want to pick up on:

In thinking ahead to future books coverage, I recently found myself combing all summer 2026 publications available to Canadian readers, in search of Jewish content, preferably but not necessarily Canadian. Search terms came up short, as they will so I went for full, painstaking combing. And there was almost nothing Jewish, along with nothing-nothing Canadian Jewish. (I have since learned I may have missed a children’s picture book that ticks both boxes. My apologies.)

The books that are everywhere are actually nowhere.

This is reflective of a point I've observed before -- a mismatch between a widespread perception (even among many Jews) that Jews are everywhere in our culture, to the point where we are dominating the space and sucking out the oxygen, and a reality that Jews are frequently nowhere -- not represented in the places they supposedly dominate, not especially heard at all. Even if you think about Hollywood, there are of course a ton of Jewish writers and actor ... but a lot fewer Jewish stories than one might think. In my White Jews article, I wrote that

the politics of Jewish invisibility is predicated on a presumption of Jewish omnipresence. Jews are not heard from because everyone assumes they have already heard from Jews—heard enough, perhaps heard too much, perhaps it is time to allow others to talk. Because Jews are thought to be everywhere, the possibility that there is in fact a gap or quietude around Jews becomes almost inconceivable. After all, if there is one thing Jews are not, it's "quiet."

If you're Jewish, everyone is going to think you're centering yourself if you say anything at all. There's no escaping it.

That Train Is Arriving On Schedule

One of my recent hobbyhorses has been to raise the alarm at one of the single most self-destructive trends I've witnessed in contemporary Jewish political activism: the pivot away from coalitional work with allies to tackle all forms of hatred and bigotry in favor of a far narrower focus on purely Jewish concerns. 

This move is sometimes justified with the rhetoric of "put your own mask on before helping others", the idea being that the threats Jews face now are simply too acute for us to divide our attention and allocate resources to the needs of our peers. But this new Look Out For Number One strategy is staggeringly short-sighted, for a host of reasons. 

The one I've mostly concentrated on is that it fails to account for the obvious fact that Jews are a small minority, and if we're justified in ignoring the needs of others to concentrate solely on our own self-interest, others are justified in doing the same to us. In a democratic system where one needs 51% of the vote, and Jews are ~2% of the population, that is an obvious losing strategy.

But Paul Horwitz flags another problem (that again, should have been obvious from the get-go): allowing hatred for other minority groups to seep into the political mainstream inevitably ends up bolstering antisemitic hatred as well. As he puts it:

Unsurprisingly, given their opposition to anything like liberal pluralism and religious freedom, when unhinged Christian nationalists start going after one faith, it’s rare that they will stop there. A good deal of the time, they won’t have started there either.

Horwitz's hook is a recent incident involving Carrie Prejean Boller, then serving on President Trump's Religious Liberty Commission, haranguing Jewish witnesses about their views on Israel/Palestine and defending antisemitic conservative activists Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson (Prejean Boller was later removed from the commission but refused to resign herself, saying she would "would rather die than bend the knee to Israel"). There was a fair amount of conservative shock to find gambling in their establishment, but Horwitz notes that the conservative "religious liberty" ecosystem that Prejean Boller is a part of and that reflects the membership of Trump's commission has long promoted Islamophobia of the most rabid sort (see, e.g., the hearings over the "Preserving a Sharia-Free America Act"). The antisemitism that is coming further into focus now is the natural extension of the Islamophobia that has been prominent and largely unchallenged for many years now. Indeed, research has consistently found that the best predicator of antisemitic views is whether the subject holds other racist and bigoted views targeting other minorities.

Again, none of this is surprising. It is the flip side of the advice Fanon got from his philosophy teacher: "When you hear someone insulting the Jews pay attention; he is talking about you." For us Jews, we might say the same thing: "When you hear someone insulting the Muslims pay attention; he is talking about us." The point being that, if you're looking to head off antisemitism, you can't afford not to care about other tides of bigotry and illiberalism that may be cresting. The "people who sincerely adhere to these views," Horwitz observes, "are hardly going to be satisfied with one enemy or one minority to threaten and deny basic constitutional rights." Even where they didn't start by talking about Jews, they'll get there. That train, as a different wise commentator put it, is never late.

The Big 4-0

I turned 40 yesterday.

As in so many things, my emotions are a mix of "the world is a trainwreck" and "my very narrow slice of it is great." I have a great job, a great family, a great house in a great city. I'm raising a great baby. I'm financially secure. If the looming specter of fascism wasn't darkening my doorstep, I'd have no complaints at all!

My wife turns 40 later this year, and she has for quite some time now been insistent that her forties will be her best decade. I've never been quite as convinced that same will be true for me. It is cliche to say "I don't feel forty; I still feel young" -- but I do. Not, you know, in terms of being able to ski or stay out late or not have random body parts start hurting for unknown reasons. And there are plenty of areas where I've always been an old soul crotchety old man. But in terms of exuberant enthusiasm? Or in terms of enjoying feeling taken care of? Or just liking video games and Star Wars and Legos? Or feeling like an up-and-comer who will wow the powers-that-be with his fresh new ideas? I still feel very young. 

And once you're forty, you are not young. There's no getting around it. In your thirties, you can kind of futz about still being a young professional -- forty isn't ambiguous. I feel like I am constitutionally required to lose all knowledge of technology, and never voluntarily listen to a new artist ever again.

But it is what it is. Time stops for no man. I'm lucky that, with a minor false start related to a (turns out wholly unneeded) dentist's appointment, I had a very nice fortieth birthday-day. The more "official" celebrations came around the Super Bowl and this weekend, but yesterday included good food and chocolate cake and quality time with wife and baby and the Olympics. So let's go back to the basics -- I am very lucky. Here's to (at least) forty more lucky years.

The Return of Encystment

I didn't see most of the Super Bowl ads, but one I actually did see was Robert Kraft's latest "blue square" installment addressing contemporary antisemitism. The basic narrative is pretty straightforward: Jewish kid walks down the hall, gets bumped by some bullies, who place a sticky note on his backpack that says "dirty Jew". Jewish kid is mad, but then a (presumably) non-Jewish kid, a student of color, offers his support (and empathy -- "I know how it is"). They walk off together as friends. Scene.

I thought it was okay. It's probably impossible to create a "good" ad on this subject -- it's always going to read at least in part "hello fellow youth" and be intrinsically uncool in that register -- but if we leave that aside it was pretty unremarkable.

And that, of course, means that many people are remarking on it -- particularly on the Jewish right, which over the past few weeks as taken an interesting pivot against fighting antisemitism at all (Bret Stephens' big 92NY speech where he argued for "dismantling" the ADL was the clarion call here). A couple people have asked for my thoughts on this new narrative, and now is as good a time as any.

At one level, the fact that the Jewish right is suddenly uninterested in tackling antisemitism at the precise moment where resurgent right-wing antisemitism has finally become so normalized amongst mainstream conservatives that even the usual hacks can't see-no-evil it is the most obvious convergence imaginable. Fighting antisemitism is a hoot when it's batting the left around, but now that it's Republicans whom one has to stand up to it just isn't fun anymore, is it?

It's almost tempting to leave it there, but I do think there is a little more that should be said. One pattern we're increasingly seeing on the Jewish right is a hostility to Jews being outward-facing, of the entire idea of building relationships and friendships and coalitions with non-Jewish partners and peers. Everything from the ADL's decision to abandon its historically broad-based civil rights mission to the near-reflexive cry that any attempt to situate the fight against antisemitism alongside other forms of bigotry is to "all lives matter" the former is part of this malaise. It stems from a sense that these other groups won't stand up for Jews, and if they won't do their part for us, why should we stand up for them? This wounded grievance doesn't come from nowhere -- I myself once wrote a post titled "Solidarity is for Goyim" -- but for some it has become exaggerated to the point of pathology: the entire prospect of cross-communal support is treated as so outlandish as to be offensive.

In that light, I think what most offended some people about the Kraft ad is that it showed a non-Jew (a non-Jew of color, no less) helping a Jewish peer. That prospect is what the new right-wing narrative dismisses as unrealistic, impossible, a sucker's bet. No wonder it infuriates them so. In a world where there is no hope for Jews to be anything other than hated by non-Jews, the only move is to turn to ourselves.

With that, turn back to Stephens. The narrative Stephens is pushing is that, in lieu of "fighting antisemitism", we should be investing more in the development of a positive Jewish identity -- in things like Jewish education and camps, Jewish media and Jewish religious education. On its own, I have no quarrel with any of these, though I don't think any of these priorities are in conflict with tackling antisemitism. In context, though, Stephens' call should be seen as a call for Jews to turn inward -- to stop focusing on our relationships with others (the negative things they say about us, yes, but also the positive opportunities we have to grow and cocreate together). They, the non-Jews, will never be reliable partners and it is a waste of time and money to pretend otherwise. Instead, let's self-generate our own authentic Jewish identity, without waste or taint from the outside world.

The great Jewish philosopher Albert Memmi had a name for this sort of move: "encystment". Encystment is a sort of self-ghettoization that occurs when the ghetto itself is perceived as providing a shell and shield (albeit a brittle one) against the dangers and anxieties of the outside world. Non-Jews are intrinsically untrustworthy; we have nothing to say to them except to bristle hard enough that they hesitate to attack us. We pull back from relating to others because we assume they will only hurt and endanger us; and instead rely solely on ourselves -- for who else is there to trust? (There's an obvious parallel to the more reactionary strands of Zionism here, on all fronts: the overwhelming sense that the entire world is against us, the fascinating interplay of weakness and strength, the obsession with self-reliance, the intrinsic value assigned to thumbing one's nose at outsiders, all of which generates a self-fulfilling prophecy of auto-isolation).

In the JTA article on the Kraft ad controversy, they quote Liel Leibovitz illustrating this pattern in typically crass fashion: "If I had ten million dollars to spend on a Super Bowl ad, I'd just show a bunch of exploding beepers, dead Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, hot Israeli girls with guns, and the caption 'F–k Around, Find Out.'"* Of course he would. The likes of Liel have no way of relating to the non-Jewish world except via extended middle finger. And so when we juxtapose Liel with Stephens or Shabbos Kestenbaum dinging the ad by saying we should invest in Jewish day schools instead, there is a connection -- don't reach out, don't try to work with others, the world sucks, curl up into your cocoon where it's warm inside.

There is, to be clear, no conflict at all between believing Jews should invest more in Jewish institutions who can help cultivate a positive Jewish identity, and in looking favorably upon the outward-facing coalitions and relationships envisioned by the Kraft ad. Indeed, for many Jews that is the foundation of our positive Jewish identity -- much of what it means to be Jewish, for us, is in how we positively relate to and affect the broader world around us. What we're seeing from Stephens and from the backlash to this ad is a longstanding frustration by the Jewish right with how American Jews have constructed their Jewish identity; a self-construction where a series of liberal values have become imbricated in the meaning of Jewishness itself.

For the likes of Stephens. this is an anathema -- it is not Judaism, it is a substitution of liberalism for Judaism. The concept of tikkun olam, both its centrality to contemporary Jewish identity and the mockery that centrality elicits amongst right-wing Jews, illustrates the point well. When Stephens calls for building positive Jewish identity, he is very much not trying to encourage those Jews who view tikkun olam as central to being Jewish to be more intentional and linking living Jewishly to, say, opposing ICE or preserving reproductive autonomy. What Stephens means is for Jews to abandon such liberal frivolities in favor of being taught how to "really" be Jewish. For Stephens, this is a matter of righting ship. But the Jews who are Jewish in the way Stephens indicts obviously disagree that our Jewishness is a false one, and we understand -- correctly -- that Stephens actually just has contempt for the Jewishness of most American Jews. He is trying to war against the predominant way American Jews have actualized our Jewishness over the past century. 

Without overstating its importance or its quality, this ad is emblematic of a vision of Judaism that has been central to the American Jewish experience for decades -- an acknowledgment of antisemitism, yes, but also an acknowledgment that we are part of a broader community that includes allies who care about us and about who we care in turn, and that this mutuality of care is part of what makes our Jewishness live. The Jewish right hates that vision and they hate the Jews and Jewish institutions who espouse it. So they are using the chaos of the present moment to try and destroy it.

* Liebovitz also wrote "it's almost impossible to imagine a more retarded ad", and I commend the JTA for not letting that slur drop unnoticed. Even better, they flag how Liebovitz's deployment of that term fits into a pattern of right-wing discourse eager to vice-signal how little they care about the equal dignity and standing of other vulnerable groups. (Specifically, JTA wrote "The epithet, which had fallen out of favor, has recently resurged on the right, dismaying people with disabilities and their advocates.").

Terry the Turtle

 

Nathaniel had a milestone this week: his first toy that he's absolutely petrified of.

The toy in question, a birthday gift from his uncle, is a plastic turtle. When you turn it on, it rolls forward and plays a little song. Then, when the music stops, the shapes on it shell pop out (the idea being the baby can put the shapes back in their slots).

The turtle has a few things cutting against it. The motor is a bit loud (particularly when the turtle gets caught on something like a rug), which clashes with the music. But Nathaniel's least favorite part is definitely the pop-out. When that happens, he instantly bursts into tears and makes a beeline for the nearest parental figure for a hug.

We're not alarmed by this -- we know "child is irrationally afraid of innocuous thing" is very normal, even for a baby as level-headed and mellow as Nathaniel. If anything, it's alarmingly cute just how scared he is of this random turtle, since it's actually quite rare anything penetrates Nathaniel's unflappable mien (in true sociopath fashion, I've decided to name the turtle "Terry", short for "terrifying").

Jill and I were wondering, though, how baby toy manufacturers deal with this sort of reaction in testing. Again, it is absolutely normal for babies to react with irrational fear towards something totally innocuous. I'm sure that for every baby that hates Terry, there are dozens who think he's their best friend. But that suggests that, like a pharmaceutical company measuring side effects, toy manufacturers probably have some maximum threshold of terrified baby that's acceptable before a product goes to market, and the idea of that metric is hilarious to me.

Meanwhile, we've stowed Terry away in a drawer. But Nathaniel has found Terry's hiding place and has gingerly started taking him out to play with. We don't turn the power on, and so the scary pop-out doesn't happen (we experimented with it once more, but Nathaniel still hated it), but it's definitely a case of Nathaniel deciding that he is going to confront his fears, and I'm very proud of him for it.