Book Editor. Author of "Found and Lost: The Jake and Cait Story," to be released by
@VineLeavesPress
April 2025. Working on a book about fighting antisemitism.
I have studied and written about antisemitism my entire life. I've interviewed scores of Holocaust survivors in my own family and as a journalist. This is the worst climate for Jews since the 1930s.
I'm a left-leaning Jew who is not at all worried about alienating my progressive friends, family, and colleagues with a forceful denunciation of the massacre, rape, and kidnapping of more than a thousand Jews. Now is the time for us all to speak up. There's no "It's bad, but ..."
When Israel accidentally kills civilians, there is an apology and investigation. When Hamas purposely kills civilians, there is celebration on the streets and candy handed out to children.
No. Israelis do not "do the same thing to Palestinians." There's no slaughter of entire communities, there's no kidnapping of women, the elderly, and children, there's no systematic rape of women before they are tortured and murdered. There's no equivalent to this barbarism.
To my fellow Jews who are Trump supporters solely because he supports a right-wing Israeli government. Replace "Hispanics" with "Jews." Is it really worth selling your soul to this worthless racist? Also, his support for "the Jews" will last as long as it's convenient for him.
Literally thousands have responded to, or "liked" this tweet. I'm sorry I cannot get to everybody. But I wish all a Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!
I have studied and written about antisemitism all my life, so I don't say this lightly or without knowledge and background. We have reached potential pogrom-level anti-Jewish hatred in the United States. We all should be on our guard. It will get violent.
Something interesting, yet predictable, is happening. Now that thousands of Hamas terrorists are dead, more Palestinians in Gaza are beginning to speak out not against Israel but against their Hamas tormentors. You won't see this covered, but Israel is indeed freeing Palestine.
The Nazification of the progressive left has permanently alienated me from identifying with them ever again. That does not mean I will suddenly lose my moral compass and become a MAGA Trumper. It just means that I'm a Jew, and we're a people apart.
Olivia Newton-John's Jewish grandfather was Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born, who fled the Nazis in 1933. We will absolutely claim her as one of our own. May her memory be a blessing.
It wasn't only October 7, 2023, that fundamentally changed Jews around the world. It was the days and weeks that followed, when the world told us it wanted more dead Jews and that it did not care about the tortured, the raped, the kidnapped. I will never be the same.
For whoever needs to hear this: Your local synagogue, Jewish-owned restaurant, and the Jewish student who sits next to you in class have absolutely no say in Israeli policy. Targeting them as a result of the Israel-Hamas war is not anti-Zionism. It is antisemitism.
Hi. Liberal Jew here. Just to clear things up:
@IlhanMN
doesn't belong on the Foreign Affairs Committee not because she's "critical of Israel." Lots of Jews are critical of Israel. It's because she regularly repeats antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish money and power.
The Jew-haters at Columbia University are shouting, "Go back to Poland." I've never been to Poland, but my great-grandmother was there. She was shoved into a cattle car and transported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered in a gas chamber.
I’m not certain American Jewry is ready for what’s coming. This wave of antisemitism is violent, fast, and comes clothed in righteousness. We have to admit now that our days of relative comfort are over.
October 7 changed me in many ways. Here's one: I am no longer going to march for other people's causes. When it came time for them to stand up against antisemitism, they were silent or hostile. There is only one cause for which I will march: the survival of the Jewish people.
Remember that time Muslim-majority nations ethnically cleansed their countries of Jews who had lived there for thousands of years and they had nowhere else to go but Israel?
The myth that there was a country called "Palestine" before 1948 whose inhabitants were colonized and displaced by Jews is the most successful lie of the past century. It is the result of generations of antisemitic propaganda that is accepted as truth by millennials and Gen-Z.
I've known Palestinians personally and am aware of all the nuances of the conflict. But there can be no mistake: This massacre was not about land, occupation, or uprising. It was a pogrom against Jews because they were Jews. It is evil that should be denounced without footnotes.
Bernie failed to win the Jewish vote, the Latino vote, the African-American vote, and the young vote. Yet, somehow, Democrats are supposed to let him sputter on because he's leader of a movement that nobody votes for?
Names like "Goldberg" were chosen by Ashkenazi Jews when we were forced to take surnames in the 18th and 19th centuries. In part, they were meant to easily identify Jews. Whoopi Goldberg appropriated that name, then brought shame to it by spreading falsehoods about Holocaust.
Imagine being a student at Berkeley and believing you're standing up against oppression by banning Jews ... and thinking you're doing anything that hasn't been done to Jews for thousands of years.
The thing is, Joe Rogan, Italians were never slaughtered because of the pizza stereotype. But because idiots like you believe Jews are "into money," we have been marginalized, brutalized, and murdered for thousands of years. And it's happening again.
To those who are offended by seeing Hamas terrorists in their underwear, but said nothing when they raped and mutilated Israeli women, you have zero sense of morality and decency.
Israel is the only country on earth that is forced to justify defending its own civilians from rocket attacks. It really bothers too many people when Jews refuse to die.
In my life, I have marched and demonstrated for everybody else’s cause. Now that it is time to take a stand against antisemitism, all are silent and I stand alone.
Let me get this straight. Young people support the Palestinian people, so they're marching in the streets in favor of a totalitarian fundamentalist dictatorship run by misogynists and rapists who steal Palestinian aid. Makes total sense.
My grandfather witnessed a pogrom when he was a child. He was hidden while the Jews of Paks, Hungary, were killed, beaten, and raped in the streets. Through him, I know what a pogrom looks like. What we witnessed today in Israel was not an act of resistance. It was a pogrom.
Wow. This blew up bigger than I thought it would. Hi, everyone. When I'm not tweeting, I'm a book editor, audio producer, and journalist who specializes in publishing and Jewish issues. Learn more on my website.
The Jew-hate on college campuses is making me physically ill. I’m moving my son out of his dorm tomorrow. I don’t know how I’ll handle it if I see campus hate demonstrations.
With Jon Stewart and Jerry Seinfeld both defending Dave Chappelle's antisemitic SNL monologue, it makes me wonder whether Jewish celebrities have any idea how non-famous Jews are targeted by the comedic "tropes" they defend.
Weird how nobody is blaming the victims of terrorism in Russia, nobody is pouring into the streets in solidarity with the terrorists, nobody is saying the victims deserved it, nobody is denying it even happened.
Those who know me, know I'm progressive. But at times like these, I'm mistaken for "right wing" because, for some reason, believing Jews have a right to live securely in their own country is not "woke."
The psychology behind October 7 mass-rape denial is the same as Holocaust denial. They know the truth. What antisemites enjoy is planting seeds of doubt and watching us Jews plead our case. I'm not going to play that ancient game. They can fuck right off.
Israel is the only place where every mistake is taken as evidence that the country shouldn't exist. Also, every time one of its citizens is butchered, that, too, is regarded as proof it shouldn't exist.
Despite what you see on CNN, here's a reminder that Iran is not "retaliating" for anything. They started this war by sending their Hamas proxies to rape, murder, and kidnap Israeli civilians on October 7.
Israel was not founded on a principle of "Jewish supremacy," as antisemites from David Duke to Linda Sarsour claim. It was founded on the idea of Jewish survival.
Antisemites hated us when we were starving in ghettos and hate us when we're successful in business and industry. They hate us when we live outside our homeland and they hate us when we live in our homeland. Does anybody see a pattern?
If you think harassing Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn is going to "free Palestine," it is possible you are using the Palestinian cause as a justification for your antisemitism.
My antisemitism tweets are losing me more followers in the literary and journalism world. People who have followed me for years have suddenly had enough of me. I can understand. It's not easy to read about the rise of antisemitism. It's best to ignore or deny.
No, random people in my mentions, Gazans cannot vote in Israeli elections because Gaza is not under Israeli control. If they'd like to have an election, they should check in with their Hamas rulers.
The false charge of Israeli genocide against Palestinians is meant to negate the actual genocide of Jews. Its purpose is to rob us of our claim to a specific kind of grief and to say, "See? You Jews are no better." It is how the world absolves itself of guilt and complicity.
In the early '70s in Georgia, my family and I were called "n****r-loving Jews" for supporting desegregation. We left the South after racists vandalized our house, tortured our cats. Today, tragically, the Black-Jewish alliance of which we were a part has been largely forgotten.
Weird how you can't dig a hole in Jerusalem without discovering evidence that Jews have lived there for thousands of years. Yet, somehow, they're "colonists."
Jonathan Glazer diminished his achievement with his "Zone of Interest" Oscar speech by drawing a moral equivalent between the dehumanization of Jews in Auschwitz and Israel's war to rid Gaza of genocidal mass murderers and rapists.
Question for my fellow Jews only. Everybody else, talk amongst yourselves.
What is your favorite Jewish ritual?
Mine is Friday-night candle-lighting because I inherited my late mother's Shabbat candlesticks and think of her every week.
It's not about Kanye's antisemitism. It's not about Nazis displaying Jew-hating posters on highway overpasses. It's the daily drumbeat of all these things—over and over and over again. For years. This is how society becomes desensitized to antisemitism and accepts it.
I am one of only a handful of Jews in Traverse City, Michigan, but my hometown is displaying its first-ever public menorah. Thank you,
#traversecity
and Happy
#Chanukah
!
I'm tired of this straw-man argument of "criticism of Israel is not antisemitic." No Jew says it is. What is antisemitic is fixation on Israel above other nations with worse human rights records and chanting slogans urging genocide of half the world's Jewish population in Israel.
Not one Jewish or Zionist account I follow has ever called for the death of a single Palestinian. However, most "anti-Zionist" accounts I see regularly call for the genocide of Jews "from the river to the sea."
If you post the phrase Israel Apartheid, you are telling me you’re nothing but a Jew-hater because the accusation is so obviously, laughably untrue, your motivation has nothing to do with being pro-Palestinian.
Every Jew will forever carry the scars of October 7, 2023, when Jews were murdered, raped, tortured, and kidnapped, and the world responded not with solidarity but with a demand for more dead Jews.
It takes Olympic-quality mental gymnastics to look at Palestinian terror groups that are anti-LGBTQ, anti-women, anti-choice, anti-free speech, anti-democratic, and pro-genocide, and decide they are a worthy progressive cause. There must be some factor that I'm missing. Hmm.
"Apartheid" in Israel is the new iteration of the ancient art of Jew-baiting. First, invent a lie. Then attack random Jews with the lie and force them to defend it. When Jews call out the lie, that is then proof of the lie's truth. It's circular and we've seen it before.
I'm left wing and believe in social justice. I also believe that Zionism is a social-justice movement of national liberation that has been twisted into something it is not because of deeply ingrained antisemitic assumptions on the left.
My take on
#ChappelleSNL
: Comedy often falls back on tropes. It's "funny" because there's a wink and a nod that the "Jews control Hollywood." It's also lazy and, in this climate, dangerous for Jews because we actually "control" very little.
I remember when
@amnesty
was a respected human-rights organization. Now, they simply take dictation from terrorists. "Writer" Walid Daqqa tortured and gouged out the eyes of Moshe Tamam, 19, castrated him, then shot him and dumped his corpse. He deserved to die in jail.
The death in custody of Walid Daqqa, a 62-year-old Palestinian writer who was the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israeli jails after 38 years of imprisonment, is a cruel reminder of Israel’s disregard for Palestinians’ right to life ⬇️
Can a Palestinian culture that celebrates the cold-blooded murder of Jewish children by handing out candy and canonizing the killer as a martyr ever become a partner for peace?
Weird. I see pro-Palestinian activists defending Palestinians where none exist (Golan) and staying silent about violence against Palestinians where they do exist (Hamas cracking down on dissent in Gaza). It's almost like their activism isn't really about Palestinians at all.
To my Jewish followers: What is the most-difficult thing about the Jewish people to explain to non-Jews?
To me, it's that it is possible to be an atheist, yet still be a Jew.
My father, a proud Vietnam vet who escaped the Holocaust when he was four years old, is eighty-seven now and just had another stroke. He is in the hospital undergoing tests. He is in my thoughts today.
Judaism cannot be divorced from Israel. Every holiday, every tradition, every meal, every prayer is about our homeland in Zion (Jerusalem). You cannot shovel a pile of dirt in the land without coming up with evidence of our presence. If you're anti-Zionist, you are anti-Jewish.
I recently read up on Armenian history for a book I was editing. There are both frightening and inspirational parallels to Jewish history. We should pay attention to what's happening in
#Armenia
now.
To the progressive organizations "both-sides-ing" the beheading of babies, massacre, and rape: What begins with the Jews never ends with the Jews. Hamas hates you, too.
I have unfollowed a great many people I formerly respected until I saw their contribution to the dehumanization of Jews. There is a direct line between their virtue-signaling uninformed opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and this new outbreak of antisemitic violence.
The branch of my family that immigrated to Israel after the Holocaust were not "settler colonialists," or whatever. They were barely alive, traumatized from concentration camps and slave labor, with nowhere else to go. The world would rather they had died, but they refused.
My great-grandmother was taken from Budapest, robbed of all her belongings, shipped to Auschwitz, gassed to death, then her body burned. My great-uncles were made to work until they were near death, then marched to Mauthausen. The only "Holocaust industry" are the lies you tell.
The Holocaust Industry (aka Israel Lobby) has long sought exclusive rights to the term "concentration camp" in order to prevent you describing Gaza in that way.
I have a client in her 80s and she wrote a book about her parents' life in British Mandate Palestine. In her manuscript, she keeps referring to her father as Palestinian, since that is what the Jews were called. The local Arabs had no Palestinian identity at the time.