Women's March 2019 -- Portside Readers Weigh-In

Jay Schaffner Portside
Last week Portside posted Rosalind P. Petchesky's piece, An Appeal to Jewish Women to Support the 2019 Women’s March and Its Leaders. Preserving the unity and diversity of the anti-Trump movement is crucial. Here are responses from Portside readers.

Jews, Anti-Semitism, Racism and White Supremacy

Michael Harriot The Root
Two things can be true at once. Jews are individually and collectively victims of anti-Semitism - violence, hate speech, bigotry, and prejudice - and Jewish people are beneficiaries and upholders of the American system of white supremacy.

Anti-Zionism Isn’t the Same as Anti-Semitism

Michelle Goldberg, Opinion Columnist The New York Times
American Jews have nothing to fear from the new congressional critics of Israel. Naturally, conservatives in the United States — though not only conservatives — have denounced Tlaib and Omar’s stance as anti-Semitic. It is not.

Nine Stops on a Long Road: One Jew’s Journey

Judith Mahoney Pasternak Tikkun
I am the Jewish teenager who wore the Star of David to make sure everyone knew she was a Jew. I am my mother, who taught her children that no one is free unless everyone is free... For all those Jews, for Israeli Jews, for Palestinians, and for the world, I am the anti-Zionist Jew.

Yes, Your Ancestors Probably Did Come Here Legally — Because 'Illegal' Immigration is Less Than a Century Old - No Visas Were Required Until 1924

Kevin Jennings Los Angeles Times
There were no federal laws concerning immigration until 1924. When a massive influx of new immigrant groups came at the turn of the 20th century — Italians from Southern Europe and Jews from Eastern Europe — a backlash developed. A new law required for the first time that immigrants to the U.S. have visas, introducing the concept of “having papers” to American immigration policy.

The Trump Administration's Most Prominent Jews Disgrace Themselves

Dana Milbank The Washington Post
What Gary Cohn, Steven Mnuchin and Jared Kushner did - or, rather, what they didn't do - is a shanda. They'll know what that means, but, for the uninitiated, shanda is Yiddish for shame, disgrace. All three let it be known through anonymous friends and colleagues that they are disturbed and distressed by what Trump said after the white terrorist demonstration and attack in Charlottesville. But not in public.

The Uses and Abuses of Anti-Semitism

Jason Farbman with Rebecca Vilkomerson, Rabbi Brant Rosen Jacobin
Campaigns to silence criticism of Israel don’t protect Jews — they endanger them. A national conversation on what antisemitism is — and what it isn’t — is long overdue. Recent reshuffling among the Trump administration may have Steve Bannon on the outs, but we are only weeks removed from a white supremacist as “the shadow president.”

books

Stefan Zweig's Messages From a Lost World

Scott McLemee Inside Higher Ed
In the period between the world wars, Stefan Zweig was among the world's best-known authors. His books would soon fuel Nazi bonfires. Zweig held that humanity could no longer afford the belligerent nationalism that had led them into the Great War. Yet Zweig was struck dumb by post 1933 events. That failure, the reviewer says, was of imagination, not nerve. Against the Nazis' depredations, all the consummate writer and speaker could muster was nostalgia for a lost world.

The Heresy and Evangelism of Bernie Sanders

Jesse Alexander Myerson The Village Voice
The New York of Bernie Sanders's childhood was full of Yiddish socialists. Often, these were Jews of Sanders's sort, their spiritual practice less fixated on giving glory to God on high than fighting for emancipation here on earth. Although that interpretation of Judaism may seem profane, even blasphemous, at first blush, it has a firm basis in scripture.
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