Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher. Chapter 1: A Portrait of the Anti-Semite Chapter 2: The Weakness of the Democrat Chapter 3: Does the Jew Exist? Chapter 4: The Authentic Jew Chapter 5: See No Evil It may be the world’s oldest hatred, but anti-Semitism remains alive […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher. Chapter 1: Myths at the Met Chapter 2: Christianity, Islam, and Holy War Chapter 3: The Absent Presence of the Jews Chapter 4: Apologetics in the Modern Museum When New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art opened Jerusalem 1000-1400: Every People […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher. Chapter 1: Jews in Early Modern Dutch Society Chapter 2: Rembrandt’s Encounter with the Jews Chapter 3: Rembrandt’s Painting of Moses Receiving the Luchot Chapter 4: Tolkien and the Jews Chapter 5: The Dialectical Nature of the Jewish People and […]

Israeli self-doubt about its own legitimacy grows out of a concern that it cannot be both Jewish and democratic. This anxiety has made its way into the Israeli Education Ministry’s curriculum. In this 2001 Azure essay, Daniel Polisar offers suggestions about how Israeli civic education can be renewed so that young Israelis will be taught […]

Why don’t Jews like the Christians who like them? Renowned political scientist James Q. Wilson explores this question in a 2008 article for City Journal. He describes evangelical support for Zionism and the Jewish people, Jewish distrust of evangelical supporters, and even the Jewish penchant to ally with hostile groups. The explanation lies, Wilson suspects, […]

Recent years have seen a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Europe, and French Jews have in particular suffered from violence and threats. Many have responded by leaving—moving to Israel, the United States, and Canada. In this 2005 Azure article, French sociology professor Shmuel Trigano explains that French hostility toward Jews as Jews is not new; […]

In this 1996 essay, written in the wake of the Oslo Accords, Yoram Hazony traces the history of post-Zionism in Israel, from its origins among artists and authors to its flourishing among academics, and ultimately to its employment by members of the government and in the education of the young. He fears that the attack […]

Palestinians and Israelis have divergent “narratives” as to how the Palestinian Arabs left the land of Israel before the refounding of the Jewish state. Is the traditional Israeli narrative correct that the Palestinians’ plight was largely “self-inflicted,” or are the Palestinians—and Israeli “new historians”—correct that the Palestinians were “the hapless victims of a Zionist grand […]

Why are Jews socialists? Nobel laureate Milton Friedman set out to explore this question in a 1972 lecture before the Mont Pelerin Society. “Jews owe an enormous debt to free enterprise and competitive capitalism,” Friedman said. And yet, “Jews have been consistently opposed to capitalism and have done much on an ideological level to undermine […]

While today Israel enjoys wide support on both sides of the American political aisle, this was not always the case. Late in 1956 the eminent political theorist Leo Strauss took the unusual step of commenting on contemporary political affairs to come to Israel’s defense. Strauss was moved to write by attacks against the nascent Jewish state […]