How We Talk About Jews Without Actually Talking to Jews

“My promise to Jewish Americans is this: With your vote, I will be your defender, your protector, and I will be the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House,” said Donald Trump hours upon beginning his second term of office. What followed was a barrage of executive orders, or open attacks, depending on your vantage point. Research grants were stripped from universities. Student activists were snatched off the street and thrown into deportation proceedings, as were thousands of immigrants, including legal residents, from around the country. Israel was offered a blank check to, first, break the tentative ceasefire with Hamas and then to potentially annex the West Bank. Non-profits were threatened with financial reprisal if they supported “terrorism” or antisemitism, which in this case generally meant talking about what experts have called a genocide in Gaza.

And while it was hard to keep track of Trump’s dizzying assault on democracy, Americans are being frequently reminded of who this is all for: the Jews. At no point in recent history have Jews played a bigger role in the public conversation about policy, both domestic and international, where Jewish needs are repeatedly cited as cause for swift action. Everyone’s talking about the Jews.

But no matter how often antisemitism is appealed to, or Jewish safety is invoked, the right’s veneer of care has slipped. Trump campaigned on deportations, just as he did on attacking the universities, unions, campus activists, and any viable challenge to his authority. Non-profits were an easy target since they are often the financial core of social movements, and hollowing out university grants helps to recede the public investment in healthcare. Trump’s Israel policy may be the most blatantly transparent since it’s easy to see how the pro-Israel consensus is built on America’s needs in the middle east and the “military Keynesianism” that aid allows the government to provide to weapons manufacturers.

The causes of Trump’s devastating policies are obvious, so why are politicians, pundits, and op-ed pages so often laying the reason at the feet of American Jews? And, perhaps more importantly, why are so few of those making these claims actually Jews themselves? This is not a particularly new phenomenon as Jews have often played as main characters in the stories that Gentiles tell about their own societies.

“[Across] several thousand years, myriad lands, and many different spheres of human activity, people have used ideas about Jews and Judaism to fashion the tools with which they construct the reality of their world,” writes medievalist David Nirenberg in his 2013 opus Anti-Judaism, discussing the way that non-Jews have employed Jews and Judaism, or at least what they said were Jews and Judaism, to define what they were not. If European Christians were spiritual, then Jews would be materialistic. If you were honest and forthright, you wouldn’t want to be like conniving Jews. Jews, it seemed, were in almost every conversation, except actual Jews aren’t invited. 

This is, it seems, part of the Western construct of the role Jews has in society. Rather than as a demographic, a Jew is a category to which the mission and justifications of power need to appeal if they are ever to achieve the perennial salience social decisions needed for acceptance. How this looks has shifted across time, with Jews often simultaneously fitting the role of necessary antagonist, willing victim, and sacral accomplice, but no matter how much of our political or social discourse swirls around the image of a Jew, Jewish reality rarely plays a role.

“I believe that Israel stared into that day is a reality we might all stare into again at some point soon -- and that some of us have already glimpsed,” writes right-wing agitator Douglas Murray in his latest lament to the West’s fallen greatness, On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization. Murray is a far-right journalist often invited onto ostensibly liberal outlets to point out where he says the left has abandoned the liberal project. Murray recently created controversy when he went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to razzle the host and MMA enthusiast for providing a platform to voices who know little of the subjects they are prattling on about, yet, as Nathan Robinson discussed recently at Current Affairs, Murray himself seems to get very basic facts about Israel and Jewish history incorrect.

What Israeli’s glimpsed, Murray says, is evil personified by the Islamist militants he says lashed out purely from Muslim brainwashing. Murray suggests it is the political left that is a grave threat to Israel, and America by extension, because of their capitulation to Islam. But as Murray raises the stakes about what could happen if the Jewish state were to cease to be the demographically protected entity it is, a key motivator of his concern is simply missing from his soliloquy: Jews. 

And his has become the right’s default perspective since October 7th. “It’s a war against white people. It’s always been a war against white people,” tweeted Ann Coulter about both Hamas’ attack and opposition to the war. Across the media, Israel has been portrayed as an explicit proxy for the West, whether in the supposedly liberal pages of Bari Weiss’ Free Press or the angry op-eds of National Review. In this telling, Palestinians are manipulating the feelings of liberals to ignore their motivating ideology, militant Islamism, and to believe a fundamental lie about the “only democracy in the Middle East.” There is certainly a nod to antisemitism, but it is often paired with phrases like “anti-Americanism,” to suggest they are part and parcel of an anti-Western, anti-liberal, and, of course, anti-democratic worldview.

These voices are largely non-Jewish, but they are often positioned alongside the alleged Jewish consensus that Israel’s war is just. But when actual Jewish people are consulted, something interesting happens: they become full-throated human beings with a range of opinions and are overwhelmingly to the left of those dominating the bully pulpit. Since October 7th, perhaps the largest and most vocal community in the ceasefire coalition have been Jewish, where groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow have more than doubled membership. After Mahmoud Khalil was arrested an even larger Jewish coalition spoke up, with a hundred Jewish organizations putting out a letter denouncing Trump’s attacks on immigrants. Rabbinic associations sued to return sanctuary status to places of worship and on April 15th three of the major Jewish denominations put out a statement "rejecting the false choice between Jewish safety [and] democracy." Jews voted against Trump in record numbers and watched in horror as Trump scolded Jewish democrats during the campaign then hired a slew of figures associated with Christian nationalism and antisemitic conspiracy theories.

And while American Jews tend to support Israel, it is with nowhere near the unqualified enthusiasm that the evangelical right has shown. Christian Zionism, the belief than Jews must gather in Eretz Yisrael to initiate the Second Coming of Jesus, the rapture, and the subsequent End of Days, is a position that arrived far earlier than Jewish Zionism, and Christian Zionists in the U.S. remain more plentiful that Jews are on planet Earth. At pulpits across the country and at conferences of America’s largest Zionist organization, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), Jews are all the rage, at least certain kinds of Jews. They focus heavily on the Jewish roots of Christianity, the argument that their messiah (who saved all of us, even the Jews) was a Jew himself, and even that you can “remain Jewish” while accepting Jesus as Moshiach. There is often a tinge of emotion in their voice, the cadence of care, yet this evaporates when they outline an eschatology centered on both the mass convergence, and genocide, of Jews in God’s plan. Jewish iconography fills the pews, they blow shofar, volunteer to support wineries in West Bank Settlements, and sprinkle their prayers and liturgies with performative Hebrew. "Hitler and the Nazis were sent by God, to chase Jews back to the land of Israel," said CUFI leader John Hagee said in a 2005 sermon, before proclaiming that Jews are not "spiritually alive." The "good Jews" in the Hagee model are those that follow Jesus' role for them, which leads to their eventual annihilation, conversion, or both. Jews could not be more important to these Christians, they are the topic of every conversation, but for whose purpose? 

But while they hope to earn Jewish support from their pro-Israel position, it’s the rest of their agenda that holds a greater impact for the lives of American Jews. Hagee is part of the larger Christian nationalist network that has staged a forty-year war on America’s democratic project. The supposedly “religious values” offered by evangelicals runs into direct opposition to what Jews typically believe about issues like abortion, women’s rights, and LGBTQ issues. The “golden age” for American Jews was based on the religious pluralism of the country’s liberal turn. As the GOP shifts towards openly adopting theocratic provisions across a range of issues, the same space that allowed Jews to prosper will shrink. When National Conservatives celebrate the legacies of the U.S. as a “Christian nation” and align that with an unquestioned support for the State of Israel there remains an underlying logic that many Jews are not confused by: Israel is your country, the U.S. is ours. 

While American antisemitism was never as entrenched as it was in Europe, there was hardly historic equality and alongside the rise of fascism was the growth of a virulent strain of anti-Jewish animus and conspiracy theories. But the shocking reality of the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 led to a sea change, both in the U.S. and across Europe, establishing a biting taboo on open expressions of antisemitism. This coalesced while American anti-communism replaced antifascism, and a new coalition formed to define the American project: Judeo-Christian values. In this way, Jews were invited in as brothers in the faith-based project of democratic liberty, an alien necessary to defeat a global threat of demonic proportions. This excoriated open antisemitism, turned it into the clearest marker between mainstream right-wing politics and the fringes of neo-fascists and white nationalists, and “anti-antisemitism” became social policy as “Never Again” filtered across American lingo. The Holocaust became a warning echoed across high school curriculum and traveling museum exhibits about the fragility of democracy and the potential barbarity we can enact upon each other. Jews were the victims but considering that suffering the rest of the Gentile world can reclaim their humanity.

But if we take a closer look at the rise of anti-communism and the McCarthyism, Buckley Conservative consensus, and, eventually, the rise of the Moral Majority, even the claim of partnership starts to unravel. Anti-communist policies were disproportionately aimed at American Jews, as were efforts to restrict immigration. Conspiracy theories that had been the hallmark of the antisemitic right became coded, instead spoken by John Birchers and their allies as a covert communist infiltration, introducing choice euphemisms like “globalists,” “internationalists,” and a supposed “fifth column.” If we look at the research of scholars like John S. Huntington or David Austin Walsh, who have tracked the rise of modern post-war conservatism we shouldn’t be shocked to find that the antisemitism, despite its falling popularity, was a core feature that was not only carried into the post-war years, but helped to create the ideological core of the conspiratorial populism that became absolutely essential for moving the working class in the favor of free market globalization: it wasn’t capitalism as such that was the problem, just those bankers with their cosmopolitan values and foreign pedigree.

And while this shift was happening, actual consciousness about Jewish life was at a nadir. By the 1960s, average Christians could not answer basic questions about Judaism and stereotypes were rampant. At the height of Cold War fervor, when political leaders gained credibility by appealing to Judeo-Christian values, we saw what has been called the Swastika Epidemic of 1959-60, where newly established neo-Nazi groups spread vandalism across hundreds of American cities. Hate crimes followed, and we saw the birth of an even more vicious form of insurrectionary white nationalism in the years that followed. 

And at the same time as the Judeo-Christian narrative became decisive in American politics, it was a crutch for an emerging Christian nationalism that began with a reaction to school desegregation and rose to shake the foundations of democracy. The unity of Judeo-Christian rarely was spoken by Jewish voices and instead was a feature of programs like the 700 Club or Jerry Falwell’s Old Time Gospel Hour, whereby Judaism was refashioned into an incomplete faith correctly concluded by Christianity. Judaism was then recast in Christian terms, erasing its distinct ideas about God or morality, ensuring that all references to Jews would be from within a fundamentally Christian assumption. Judaism was finally safe because of its proximity to Christianity, and Jews would become partners as long as they fit within the monolithic language the American evangelical world spoke for them. Within this coalition an increasingly marginal series of Jewish voices were chosen, usually more conservative and rural than the majority American Jewish population and breaking with the mainstream of Jewish life.

What Jews Actually Believe

 Jewish communities lean overwhelmingly to the political left and maintain congregations active in defending reproductive justice, in building queer spirituality, in developing a feminist presence at the bimah, and fighting global injustice. And yet, a story is being told about our own scriptures and traditions in the cadence of evangelism, creating a mono narrative about what religion means and who has the right to speak about our canon.

There is an element of public fatigue in the mention of Jews, what we want or what we believe, and yet unless those voices are in line with the American, non-Jewish consensus, Jews rarely speak for ourselves.

And as the stakes are raised, as a genocide continues in Palestine and as Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods see street attacks, the visibility of “Jewish issues” increasingly becomes a political volley for non-Jewish grifters who know best how to protect the precious Jews their heart breaks for. And while this has become acute in the GOP, it is a feature of mainstream political discourse whereby the Jews are invoked to justify nearly any regressive policy a politician calls for as a nod to their right.

This is most obvious, perhaps, with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 document, an outline produced last year of just what could be possible with a second Trump term. In the section called Project Esther they offer their proposal for how to deal with rising antisemitism, which is primarily through deporting students, activists, and people of Arab descent, who they indict as a seething mass of undifferentiated Jew hatred. Jews are referenced all over the document, and yet, what do they know of Jews? There are frequent errors, such as referring to the Reform Movement as “Reformed,” a Christian denomination they mistakenly thought was shared by Jews. It lists several Jewish politicians as belonging to the “Hamas Caucus” and said that many Jewish “elected Jewish Representatives chose political expediency over the morally correct position against antisemitism.” And on this issue of antisemitism and Jewish safety it notes in no uncertain terms that American Jews could not be trusted to confront this issue because they are systemically complicit, saying that “American Jewish community has not demonstrated a unified resolve” against these threats and the accompanying “Anti-Americanism.” The language used is familiar, calling these American Jews perhaps “blind,” just as they had been historically blind to the truth offered by the church. Because of this, the Republicans will act in our interest, and they suggest purging curriculum of “diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and similar Marxist" ideologies, remove and deport offending faculty and students, undermine protest efforts, and attack NGOs.

In the document whose stated goal is Jewish safety and flourishing, no concern is offered about the fact that halacha (Jewish law) deals with abortion differently than the largely evangelical conservative base, or that Christian adoption agencies can discriminate against Jewish families, or that Orthodox Jews are increasingly living in poverty, or that antisemitic conspiracy theories are spreading online in the same cesspool that is leading to anti-vaccine sentiment or Islamophobic bigotry. There is no mention about the fact that the university funding that was recently pulled from Columbia over alleged antisemitism was researching forms of cancer that disproportionately affects Ashkenazi Jews (such as breast and uterine cancer), nor was there a mention that the organizations tied to antisemitic hate crimes are typically connected to the movements that likewise target the same communities this document indicts, such as immigrants or Muslims.

When Jews are invited to speak with this coterie of Republicans, it is often figures like Israel Yoram Hazony, who has no problem with the U.S. becoming a Christian nation because the Jews already have a country, he believes they should be emigrating to. The small number of Jews the largely Christian right has collected into their corner may seem opportunistic, but those figures tend to be in the room because of their shared political and financial commitments rather than some allegedly ubiquitous “Jewish interest” they are there to represent. Hazony would be more welcome at the Heritage Foundation than the average American synagogue.

A similar dynamic was seen at the end of June when Zohran Mamdani won the first round of the Democratic Primary for Mayor of New York City. Mamdani was the target of an aggressive campaign using his refusal to denounce the phrase “globalize the intifada,” something he had never actually said and was in line with recent partisan attempts to slander left-wing political leaders as alleged antisemites and Hamas supporters. In response to Mamdani’s victory there was a frantic flurry of comments from critics about how New York City will no longer be safe for Jews. And yet when we actually look at the voting patterns, something else emerges. For one, Mamdani was heavily supported by a large number of young Jews and their political organizations. Second, despite the increasingly conservative Orthodox voting bloc, there was a shift in the direction of Mamdani in Orthodox neighborhoods, which is likely a sign that issues like housing costs take precedence over the alleged importance of phrases he will or will not condemn.

What would it mean for Jews to be the main character of a Jewish story? On the one hand, we have Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee who try to establish what they call communal consensus on our interests, except their entire model is built on an American establishment ethos that many of our ancestors felt explicitly rejected by. These organizations were themselves an alternative to the rabble-rousing institutions of the Jewish left that Eastern European Jewish immigrants brought with them in the early part of the 20th Century, created by affluent Central European Jews who wanted to assimilate as well as possible to the American Gentile (see Christian) mean. Today, they project this narrative about “what Jews want,” which, apparently, is to be as much like our conservative, suburban, Christian neighbors as possible. Even in polls, which they invest in millions yearly, we end up with constrained schematics of Jewish opinion on everything from elections to Israel that limit the potential range of Jewish opinion. But when polls are done with more clarity and specificity, we find that the assumed “pro-Israel,” establishment opinion that American Jews allegedly hold breaks down: Jews do not want the status quo Occupation in Palestine and are not universally consumed with pro-Israel political obsessions, nor do they want the attacks on labor unions, the deportation of graduate students, the defunding of universities, the reversal of abortion rights, or a global bombing campaign running from Yemen to Iran.

The irony is that as much as we are hearing about Jews and not from them, Jews are as visible as they ever have been. On March 20th, a thousand Jews amassed in New York City’s Lower East Side, demanding an end to retaliatory deportations. This was just the latest Jewish-led rally amassed in cities across the country to say not just that the bombs must stop, but that the U.S. should stop arming Israel. Jewish organizations, activists and congregations are disproportionately represented in every protest movement across the last decade, from April 4th “Hands Off” rallies across the country to the campus encampments demanding divestment from apartheid. Jews were talking at these events, from bullhorns, PA systems, in letters to supporters, in petitions, with their feet. The question is who was listening, and what they heard if they did.

Part of why we are not hearing a story about Jews from Jews is that there is no one story about Jews. This should be obvious, but the American model of “speaking for those who [allegedly] can’t speak” has ensured that the general assumption is of communal agreement, when this is a logical impossibility. Jews exist on every continent, every background, every manifestation of religiosity or secular irreverence, so who could possibly assume that they are speaking for the interests of “the Jews.” But that reality, the express dynamic of the Jewish diaspora that has spanned the globe for thousands of years, may be the one clear thing we can identify of what Jews want: to speak for ourselves. When Jews are asked, we express growing concern over the use of what appear as concentration camps for deportees, the attacks on the labor movement that our Jewish ancestors built, the undermining of the rights so many of our communities had fought for, and the reality that we know that no Jew has been made safer by stripping the rights from our neighbors. Jewish particularity relies on a society where difference and distinction are honored, and where no person is afraid that their uniqueness will be refashioned into a weapon to undermine the basic sovereignty deeded to our ancestors. No policy of deportation, of public defunding, of exasperated warfare will ensure a world where that is possible, where Jews, or anyone else, can speak for ourselves.