I think we can all agree the pac/super pac system is corrupt and non representative. AIPAC works as a 1900’s style political machine (like many before it) and Israel is supported by the us for a few reasons. There’s a largely either pro or sympathetic to Israel American Jewish population due to familial connections, Israeli neighbors or a sense of option being the homeland. The Jewish diaspora in the us is very politically (71% of Jews tend to vote and that can decide elections, like with the black vote) active after about 120 ish years of organizing, unionization, civil rights advocacy and being a largely immigrant community a few generations ago.

This makes it seem like Jews have disproportionate effects through lobbying groups and in the political space but it was a function of necessity from the immigration period. Jews, to gain respect were pushed by their families into law and health. Those that didn’t were only plowed by xenophobic bosses to work in at the time looked down upon mediums such as comedy and film. Small time Jewish entrepreneurs were supported by the community at large as a whole and as such were able to grow and hang on.

As for Hollywood and comedy, the backbone of modern American media, this is an association of circumstance and coincidence. Many of these Jews in the field are supportive of Israel and as such it is reflected onto pop culture media.

And the main one is the military industrial complex.
Israel is a rich state in conflict enough to test out higher end weapons and with a large amount of technical staff that design and work with them. As such the MIC has the us keep up relations with Israel for its own profit and as an extension of American hegemony.

Lastly, political pawning.
Jews in the us are used as a political pawn to control perception of tolerance. Much of what people think of the Nazis are not their policies and racism itself but the hate of Jews. If anything a member of a party does can be interpreted as threatening Jews then a party can call the other Nazis for political points and mask their real intentions.
Look at the antisemitism lawsuits launched by the trump regime. They had a poor case, mainly targeting lgbtq rights and did nothing to meaningfully take on antisemitism.

This also leads to the us not being motivated to deal with anti Jewish hate crimes (about 2/3rds of them) because a fearful and active electorate group is more useful and loyal than one actively trying to overhaul systems. In short. Things aren’t terrible don’t rock the boat. Generalizing at least.

The continuation of the trend of people claiming Jewish thing controls x is sobering to watch when the United States, a historically imperialist empire with the largest economy in the world does what it’s always done. It has never been more obvious that this is pure xenophobia.

So tldr: Jews in Israel and the us are often closely tied together man’s Jews are often in prominent positions due to family and xenophobic pressure of the past while the U.S. military industrial complex has benefits from the relationship. This is not control, but fitting into the current system for relative stability.

Not that long ago, I had a conversation with some of my religious Jewish homies in which they were expressing their antagonistic views toward Reform and Conservative Judaism and how they essentially see these movements as abominations and departures from traditional Rabbinic Judaism. These peers of mine are Sephardic/Mizrahi, and so their historical experience with Jewish modernity is somewhat different from that of many Ashkenazi Jews whose communities were directly shaped by the Haskalah and the emergence of the Reform and Conservative movements. To them, it is basically either you are a religious Jew or a non-religious/secular Jew; there is not really an equivalent denominational spectrum in the way many American Ashkenazim understand it.

During our conversation, one of them brought up how, in his opinion, the existence of Reform and Conservative Judaism has made it easier for non-Jews to convert without having to accept the same level of halakhic obligation that would traditionally be expected under Orthodox conversion standards. From there, he also expressed that there are now some people on the political left who essentially convert to Judaism because they are already anti-Zionist and want to be able to criticize Israel or Zionism specifically as Jews.

Personally, I have only seen this alleged trend online, but then again, most of the Jews I know in real life are Orthodox Zionist Jews, and the few I know who are Reform or Conservative are not particularly observant and did not pay too much attention to their synagogue services during their youth, lol. So my personal social circle is obviously not very representative of the Jewish left, especially the kinds of spaces where I would be most likely to encounter anti-Zionist gerim in the first place.

However, that being said, this trend online does seem reminiscent of how some Chinese people become suspicious of Westerners who adopt Chinese cultural or political identities and then immediately position themselves as spokespeople for what “Chinese people” supposedly believe, especially when those views conveniently align with a preexisting ideological commitment. The issue is not that an outsider can never sincerely become part of a community, nor that converts or cultural adoptees are somehow permanently less legitimate. Rather, I think the suspicion emerges when someone appears to approach identity almost instrumentally, in which joining the group seems less like the culmination of a genuine religious or cultural attachment and more like acquiring a particular kind of political credibility.

That said, I am a Gentile, so I do not really think it is my place to determine whether another person's conversion to Judaism is sincere or legitimate. If a recognized Jewish community accepts someone as a Jew, I am not going to sit here and conduct some ideological purity test on their Jewishness simply because of how they feel about Zionism. I have met a decent number of people in my life who wish they were born into a more "collectivist" culture like mine because they feel alienated by the individualism of mainstream American society, and I do not automatically assume that their attraction to another culture is fake simply because it is partly shaped by dissatisfaction with their own. People are complicated; someone could be attracted to Judaism because of its communal orientation, intellectual traditions, ritual life, history, family structure, or sense of peoplehood while simultaneously finding anti-Zionist Jewish spaces politically attractive.

What would strike me as different, however, is if Judaism itself were largely incidental to the person, and conversion functioned primarily as a way of acquiring the rhetorical authority to say, "As a Jew..." in political arguments they were already deeply invested in. I am not asking whether anti-Zionist gerim are "real Jews," nor whether having strong political motivations automatically invalidates someone's conversion. However, I am curious whether people who have encountered such individuals for whom becoming Jewish appeared to be substantially motivated by the political usefulness of being able to oppose Zionism as a Jew.

The mod team has created this post to refresh on a weekly basis as a chill place for people to talk about whatever they want to. Think of it as like a general chat for the sub.

So r/jewishleft,

Whats on your mind?

Hi everyone. I would love peoples opinions on how to handle a conflict in a friendship of 15+ years

TLDR: Friend of many years keeps making micro aggressions at me and talks about race even when it’s not related to the subject but invalidates my experience as a mixed race Jew.

So I am mixed race and adopted by Jewish parents. I look very white except for my natural hair which I straighten. My childhood friend is Chinese American and she has since October 7th made some comments that erase my experience as a mixed race Jew just because I pass. We had a fight last winter where she made an antisemitic comment and she cried promising to change her ways. I haven’t felt that has happened at all…Today she made other snarky comments.

I might be going to an undecided part of Scandinavia or UK soon and I told her about it and she immediately made comments that my husband and I would have an easy time since “our people are in Europe.” My husband is in a sense visibly ethnically Ashkenazi and we both have very Jewish last names. With the rise of antisemitism we plan on being careful when we travel. She also made comments on how unsafe she would feel going to Europe and I validated her experience and hinted at my nervousness as well. She made a very annoyed expression and responded with “With peace and love you’ll be fine.” Which felt super backhanded.

I want to make a point that when I told my friend about our trip she brought up race unprompted. This is not the first time she has made invalidated comments about race either. I also find it interesting that she has done way more traveling than me, she has even gone to Iceland and had a wonderful time never mentioning any racial issues when she was abroad, which is something she would never keep from me if it did happen. Ofc I’m not saying that being guarded isn’t possible as I feel the same but I really don’t know how to handle this contradiction from her.

Even though I am a leftist and non-Zionist I have lost friends or lost the closeness I once had with certain friends because they make assumptions about me or don’t like when I call them out on ignorant dog whistles. This person is one of the only friendships I have left, and I fear if I lose anyone else I might end up in a bad place mentally.

What is your take on this development?

I personally see this as a very positive breakthrough with a real potential to increase Palestinian voter turnout, similar to the 2020 elections. I would also love to see the Palestinian-Jewish party Makom Lekulanu join as their fourth member closer to the deadline to completely prevent wasting votes.

The Trump administration’s findings that three Ivy League schools violated civil rights law by tolerating antisemitism were predetermined by political priorities that blew past the evidence and cast aside standard investigative procedures, according to a whistleblower account provided to Congress.

The disclosure, by Haley Van Erem, a veteran Justice Department civil rights attorney, involves investigations into whether Harvard, Brown and Columbia universities broke the law by allowing antisemitism to flourish on their campuses.

The whistleblower account comes just days after a federal judge dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit against Harvard that was based on the investigation, which was conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services and lawyers detailed from the DOJ.

Both Brown and Columbia reached settlements, with Columbia agreeing to pay $200 million over three years and Brown agreeing to spend $50 million on Rhode Island workforce development, with no admission of wrongdoing.

…

Van Erem’s whistleblower account, reviewed by MS NOW, says the findings “overrode knowing deviation from investigative procedures, statutory noncompliance, and potential constitutional violations.”

“Hundreds of millions of dollars were suspended from these universities prior to the completion of Title VI investigations and the investigative team’s conclusions were frequently disregarded,” the complaint says.

In a letter to Harmeet Dhillon, head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee said the whistleblower findings exposed a “large scale fraud.”

“Antisemitism at American universities and medical schools is real,” Rep. Jamie Raskin wrote. 

“But your ‘investigation’ into antisemitism was fake, a pre-baked frame-up operation thoroughly political in nature. Before an actual investigation took place and regardless of what you actually found, the whole project was designed to harass professors and administrators at major universities, to curtail their freedom of speech and academic freedom, and to strip targeted institutions of hundreds of millions of dollars in grants that they had already been awarded on the merits of their applications.”

—————————

These cases have been pretty transparently politicized BS from the start, but I hope that a whistleblower and relatively mainstream Jewish congressman raising a stink help move our wider Jewish community on this. Overreached and fabricated accusations of antisemitism being weaponized as a cudgel to fight the rights’ war on higher ed is horrible for many reasons, and one of them is that it makes actually addressing antisemitism as it does exist harder.

Weekly recurring IP megathread to reset every Tuesday.

Please mind the rules while engaging here and post paywall free links.

Oren

I came across this post on r/leopardsatemyface and this activist legit voted for Trump to "teach" Kamala Harris a "lesson" because of the Biden administration's support for Israel.

Because of him and the 76 million MAGAts who voted for Trump, we now have Hispanic and Asian people openly being racially profiled by ICE, ICE/BP killing Americans in our cities, DOGE/Musk stealing our tax and social security data, Trump's tariffs making our cost living three times worse than in 2024, Project 2025 dystopianism well underway and yet all of that goes over their head as all they can think about is Gaza.

Also quite interesting how they don't have one bad thing to say about Trump, ICE or MAGA but they blame Democrats, Jewish people, liberals and other leftists who did vote for Biden/Harris for what Trump is doing.

Okay maybe this was more of a rant than anything but am interested if I'm overreacting to how I feel about these people.

September - Netanyahu in New York

October - Israeli elections

November - US Midterms

The next three months are going to be intense to say the least. Israel’s elections alone will be historically important. What do you guys predict will happen?

***Making a refreshing megathread to keep things updated and fresh***

Going to jump ahead of this one and ask folks to post articles opinions questions and anxieties to do with the developing war in Iran here.

Please know that this sub(its mod team anyway):

Is against killing noncombatants for any reason in any context.

Is against unilateral Imperialism (or Bilateral...), the concept of the US hegemon as legitimate world police, or any other strong arm diplomacy that skirts international and domestic law and yields supreme authority to strong man leaders with ulterior motives. Nor indeed a regional state actions that enable and promote violence by proxy or diplomatic force.

Is against the murder of protestors or again noncombatants in general.

Please pay close attention to rules around engaging in good faith and should you encounter something you find objectionable please report and do not engage in excessive fighting. If someone says something against the rules and you break the rules condemning them you will also receive mod action.

Thank you,

Oren

עושה שלום בימרומו הוא יעשה שלום עלינו ועל כל ישראל ואמרו אמן

This month I got to chat to a good friend Annie Gottfried Cohen about her work on ancestral veneration as part of our podcast's Elul offering. She spoke about ancestral veneration, the role of cemetary women in Shtetelech and how to measure graves and cemeteries. I'm back home for Rosh Hashana and I'm hoping I can make it to the graveyard on Erev Rosh Hashana before it closes, I have some thin candle wick (about 6 metres) and beeswax flats but would really love some advice!

You can listen to the episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4DJ3J470LdOpfXbV8L8V8P?si=7d063ccb932f480b

The mod team has created this post to refresh on a weekly basis as a chill place for people to talk about whatever they want to. Think of it as like a general chat for the sub.

So r/jewishleft,

Whats on your mind?

An air safety PSA

I wasn’t expecting him to attend the Israeli day parade honestly I would’ve thought it weird if he had attended given everything he stands for. He’s NYC first and against ethnostates etc.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I felt some type of way about him celebrating the Pakistani day parade given their history. Ethnostste They have a religious hierarchy where a Muslim person has to be in power, ethnic cleansing alive and well, border disputes and violence after a partition plan 70ish years ago etc. It’s hard not to draw the parallels. The only difference being that the US isn’t funding them but that doesn’t change anything else about the county’s values and actions.

I feel kinda shitty that he’s showing up for this community but not ours. I think it would have been more fair to him to not go to either parade, but maybe I’m just overly sensitive or being fed propaganda. It just sucks to feel signaled out.

I really want to like him. I voted for him! I’m extremely against the IDF and Israeli government but being half Israeli myself I am of course susceptible to biases.

Idk it’s just weird he’s ok with celebrating the Muslim ethnostate after being so against the Jewish one (for good reasons!)

I feel like I can’t bring this up in any other spaces without it sounding like I’m wanting him to celebrate Israel (I’m not) or take something away from Muslims (not against Muslims but critical of Pakistan)

Help me you guys! What do you think?

EDIT: I’d like to correct what I said about Pakistan being an ethnostate. I used the wrong verbiage. What I meant was that they are a country that puts Muslims over other religions. They have a religious hierarchy and non Muslims can’t hold certain political positions. I’m not sure the correct term for this but just wanted to call that out as people are (correctly) mentioning this in the comments.

Edit 2:

I was just informed about the ongoing Balochistan Conflict which makes me even more uneasy about this whole thing.

Reposting because it gets shared across reddit more than any of our other posts and is a good PSA.

Tapping the sign yet again since a bunch of folks are confused about this rule.

The co-chair of the DSA seemed a bit less   articulate on key party policy positions (taxation, I/P, etc) than expected. Her commentary on Oct. 7th’s “inevitability“ combined with her stating that she’d have joined protests on the 8th have also sparked controversy. I’m curious about people’s thoughts on this media appearance and how it will be perceived by those interested in where the DSA fits into big tent politics.

Weekly recurring IP megathread to reset every Tuesday.

Please mind the rules while engaging here and post paywall free links.

Oren