Overview

This volume features powerful essays by Edward Alexander on the phenomenon of anti-Zionism on the part of the Jewish intelligentsia. It also analyzes the explosive growth of traditional anti-Semitism, especially in Europe, among intellectuals and Muslims. Alexander notes that anti-Zionism has established a presence even in Israel, where it frequently takes the form of intellectuals sympathizing with their country's enemies and perversely apologizing for their own existence. Alexander begins with an examination of the origins of Jewish self-hatred in nineteenth-century Europe. He then explores the mindset of disaffected Jews in reacting, or failing to react, to the two events that shape modern Jewry: the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel. The book concludes with a focus on contemporary anti-Zionism, including three essays about the role played by Jews in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement to expel Israel from the family of nations. A final essay addresses the need for American Jews to decide whether they are going to judge Judaism by the standards of The New York Times or The New York Times by the standards of Judaism.

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9781412856829

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Reviews

An excoriating assault on Jewish apostates --Jews who, in the words of Maimonides, separate themselves from the community or hold aloof from the congregation of Israel and is indifferent when they are in distress. --Peter J. Leithart, First Things Edward Alexander is one of those rare academics whose prose is a delight to read. These richly informative and trenchantly critical essays, dating from 1986 to 2014, range widely over the landscape of contemporary Jewish denunciation of Israel. Most of his subjects see themselves as defenders of Enlightenment values against what they presume to be Jewish sectionalism and obscurantism. Alexander brilliantly dissects the ideological confusions and broken-backed arguments that litter this stance. To a non-Jew like myself, however, with few illusions left concerning the complicity of the present-day liberal-left with kinds of antisemitism that used to be the sole province of the extreme Right, there is also a good deal of pathos about these refugees from Judaism as they leap, with unerring agility, from the frying-pan into the fire. --Bernard Harrison, University of Utah and University of Sussex Edward Alexander is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand the culture wars raging among Jews in recent years. A knowledgeable guide to these fractious debates, and also an energetically engaged participant in many of them, Alexander writes as both critical analyst and intellectual combatant. His passionate, provocative essays, composed in a polemical style all his own, unsettle as well as inform. --Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Indiana University

These remarkable essays by Edward Alexander bring intellectual precision, moral fearlessness and literary elegance to bear on a syndrome that could be called Jewish suicidalism. That is almost the right name for it, save that the leaders of this trend - portraits delineated by Alexander - exempt themselves from the condemnations they rain down on their fellows. The motivational patterns that Alexander exposes cannot, as is sometimes claimed, reduce to self-hatred. Rather, shown in vivid detail are the workings of opportunistic self-love... If there is such a thing as tone deafness for what is consequential in history, it is the achievement of Edward Alexander's Jews Against Themselves to refine our capacity to recognize it. - Abigail L. Rosenthal, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (jcpa.org) I am overjoyed by the gathering of these essays and at the same time wildly depressed, because to read them again, not one by one as before, but in the hideous Niagara force of their phalanxes is frightening. As a virtuoso polemical work, as a literary tour de force, Jews Against Themselves is a masterpiece. - Cynthia Ozick, short story writer, novelist, and essayist [Edward Alexander] profiles in this powerful little book a rogues' gallery of Jews who have decided, as he puts it, that Israel is the devil's own experiment station and either barely sustains a right to exist or has forfeited it altogether... why-as a recurrent phenomenon spanning centuries-have Jews turned so virulently against Jews? ... [W]hatever the wellsprings of the malaise, Alexander's book depicts it masterfully and exposes these scoundrels in their true infamy. - P. David Hornick, PJ Media In Jews against Themselves, Alexander takes up the curious and disturbing phenomenon of his volume's title. A professor emeritus at the University of Washington, Alexander is a distinguished student of American and English literature and an essayist whose erudition is ornamented by a coruscating wit... We live in an era when survivors of the greatest catastrophe ever to befall the Jewish people are still living among us, yet a small but influential cadre of Jews, mimicking the disreputable conduct of a smaller number of their forebears, are fortifying the intentions of today's most virulent anti-Semites, including the genocidal among them. Hatred of Jews, a lengthy history suggests, has an infectious character. By the evidence compiled here, the virus has found a ready host even in some of those whom it would first destroy. - Gabriel Schoenfeld, Mosaic In Deuteronomy, the people of Israel are told that their enemies will come from one direction but will flee in seven. Nowadays, something like the opposite seems to be true, with Israel's enemies coming at her from many directions. One of these is from within. These internal enemies are the subject of Jews Against Themselves... Like Jewish apostates of medieval times, these 'modern Jewish apostates,' carry out with greater zeal than non-Jews the persecution of their bretheren... Alexander is a superb writer and wields a very sharp pen. - David Isaac, The Washington Free Beacon Many of the mordant Jewish critics of Israel, as the author indicates, are wedded to Enlightenment and liberal values and believe that Israel has betrayed the ideals of those legacies. Alexander put it beautifully: For members of the anti-Israel coalition, he says, there is a straight line from the revelation at Sinai to the left wing of the Democratic Party. In his survey of the leading Jewish anti-Israel mob, Alexander uses a skillful scalpel in eviscerating Bernard Avishai, Michael Lerner and Peter Beinart-all of whom, as Mark Anthony said, 'are honourable men.' ... Those who derive their political ethos from the Enlightenment and liberalism and translate it into a violent critique of Israel are mistranslating the legacy of those two movements, and demonstrating a paralyzing rigidity in their understanding of reason. - Arnold Ages, Chicago Jewish Star [Edward Alexander] exposes and eviscerates Jewish self-hatred, the liberal betrayal of Zionism, the moral failure of American Jewish intellectuals, and - as only an academic could - the rampant anti-Semitism that infests American universities and how it came to lodge there. Alexander's intellectual weapons are formidable. A literary scholar, he weaves Matthew Arnold, George Eliot and Franz Kafka into his narrative. A knowledgeable student of history, he integrates Benjamin Disraeli, Karl Marx and George Orwell into his analysis. He is as familiar with the Israeli apologetics of Amos Oz and David Grossman as he is with the tortured American Jewish gyrations of Hannah Arendt, Michael Lerner, and anguished Jews at The New York Times. His distinctive voice is audible and powerful. - Jerold S. Auerbach, The Algemeiner Alexander, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington, is a combat veteran of the intra-Jewish quarrels of the past several decades, and he is one of the most skilled. In this, perhaps the most important of his many books, Professor Alexander takes on the painfully relevant topic of what he calls 'the new forms taken by Jewish apostasy.'... Jews Against Themselves sheds much-needed light on the subject and deserves to be on everyone's must reading list. - Benyamin Korn, The Algemeiner An excoriating assault on Jewish apostates -Jews who, in the words of Maimonides, separate themselves from the community or hold aloof from the congregation of Israel and is indifferent when they are in distress. - Peter J. Leithart, First Things Alexander's no-nonsense tone is a tonic. - Shmuel Ben-Gad, Association of Jewish Libraries Review Edward Alexander is one of those rare academics whose prose is a delight to read. These richly informative and trenchantly critical essays, dating from 1986 to 2014, range widely over the landscape of contemporary Jewish denunciation of Israel. Most of his subjects see themselves as defenders of Enlightenment values against what they presume to be Jewish sectionalism and obscurantism. Alexander brilliantly dissects the ideological confusions and broken-backed arguments that litter this stance. To a non-Jew like myself, however, with few illusions left concerning the complicity of the present-day liberal-left with kinds of antisemitism that used to be the sole province of the extreme Right, there is also a good deal of pathos about these refugees from Judaism as they leap, with unerring agility, from the frying-pan into the fire. - Bernard Harrison, University of Utah and University of Sussex Edward Alexander is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand the culture wars raging among Jews in recent years. A knowledgeable guide to these fractious debates, and also an energetically engaged participant in many of them, Alexander writes as both critical analyst and intellectual combatant. His passionate, provocative essays, composed in a polemical style all his own, unsettle as well as inform. - Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Indiana University

I am overjoyed by the gathering of these essays and at the same time wildly depressed, because to read them again, not one by one as before, but in the hideous Niagara force of their phalanxes is frightening. As a virtuoso polemical work, as a literary tour de force, Jews Against Themselves is a masterpiece. - Cynthia Ozick, short story writer, novelist, and essayist [Edward Alexander] profiles in this powerful little book a rogues' gallery of Jews who have decided, as he puts it, that Israel is the devil's own experiment station and either barely sustains a right to exist or has forfeited it altogether... why-as a recurrent phenomenon spanning centuries-have Jews turned so virulently against Jews? ... [W]hatever the wellsprings of the malaise, Alexander's book depicts it masterfully and exposes these scoundrels in their true infamy. - P. David Hornick, PJ Media In Jews against Themselves, Alexander takes up the curious and disturbing phenomenon of his volume's title. A professor emeritus at the University of Washington, Alexander is a distinguished student of American and English literature and an essayist whose erudition is ornamented by a coruscating wit... We live in an era when survivors of the greatest catastrophe ever to befall the Jewish people are still living among us, yet a small but influential cadre of Jews, mimicking the disreputable conduct of a smaller number of their forebears, are fortifying the intentions of today's most virulent anti-Semites, including the genocidal among them. Hatred of Jews, a lengthy history suggests, has an infectious character. By the evidence compiled here, the virus has found a ready host even in some of those whom it would first destroy. - Gabriel Schoenfeld, Mosaic In Deuteronomy, the people of Israel are told that their enemies will come from one direction but will flee in seven. Nowadays, something like the opposite seems to be true, with Israel's enemies coming at her from many directions. One of these is from within. These internal enemies are the subject of Jews Against Themselves... Like Jewish apostates of medieval times, these 'modern Jewish apostates,' carry out with greater zeal than non-Jews the persecution of their bretheren... Alexander is a superb writer and wields a very sharp pen. - David Isaac, The Washington Free Beacon Many of the mordant Jewish critics of Israel, as the author indicates, are wedded to Enlightenment and liberal values and believe that Israel has betrayed the ideals of those legacies. Alexander put it beautifully: For members of the anti-Israel coalition, he says, there is a straight line from the revelation at Sinai to the left wing of the Democratic Party. In his survey of the leading Jewish anti-Israel mob, Alexander uses a skillful scalpel in eviscerating Bernard Avishai, Michael Lerner and Peter Beinart-all of whom, as Mark Anthony said, 'are honourable men.' ... Those who derive their political ethos from the Enlightenment and liberalism and translate it into a violent critique of Israel are mistranslating the legacy of those two movements, and demonstrating a paralyzing rigidity in their understanding of reason. - Arnold Ages, Chicago Jewish Star [Edward Alexander] exposes and eviscerates Jewish self-hatred, the liberal betrayal of Zionism, the moral failure of American Jewish intellectuals, and - as only an academic could - the rampant anti-Semitism that infests American universities and how it came to lodge there. Alexander's intellectual weapons are formidable. A literary scholar, he weaves Matthew Arnold, George Eliot and Franz Kafka into his narrative. A knowledgeable student of history, he integrates Benjamin Disraeli, Karl Marx and George Orwell into his analysis. He is as familiar with the Israeli apologetics of Amos Oz and David Grossman as he is with the tortured American Jewish gyrations of Hannah Arendt, Michael Lerner, and anguished Jews at The New York Times. His distinctive voice is audible and powerful. - Jerold S. Auerbach, The Algemeiner Alexander, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington, is a combat veteran of the intra-Jewish quarrels of the past several decades, and he is one of the most skilled. In this, perhaps the most important of his many books, Professor Alexander takes on the painfully relevant topic of what he calls 'the new forms taken by Jewish apostasy.'... Jews Against Themselves sheds much-needed light on the subject and deserves to be on everyone's must reading list. - Benyamin Korn, The Algemeiner An excoriating assault on Jewish apostates -Jews who, in the words of Maimonides, separate themselves from the community or hold aloof from the congregation of Israel and is indifferent when they are in distress. - Peter J. Leithart, First Things Alexander's no-nonsense tone is a tonic. - Shmuel Ben-Gad, Association of Jewish Libraries Review Edward Alexander is one of those rare academics whose prose is a delight to read. These richly informative and trenchantly critical essays, dating from 1986 to 2014, range widely over the landscape of contemporary Jewish denunciation of Israel. Most of his subjects see themselves as defenders of Enlightenment values against what they presume to be Jewish sectionalism and obscurantism. Alexander brilliantly dissects the ideological confusions and broken-backed arguments that litter this stance. To a non-Jew like myself, however, with few illusions left concerning the complicity of the present-day liberal-left with kinds of antisemitism that used to be the sole province of the extreme Right, there is also a good deal of pathos about these refugees from Judaism as they leap, with unerring agility, from the frying-pan into the fire. - Bernard Harrison, University of Utah and University of Sussex Edward Alexander is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand the culture wars raging among Jews in recent years. A knowledgeable guide to these fractious debates, and also an energetically engaged participant in many of them, Alexander writes as both critical analyst and intellectual combatant. His passionate, provocative essays, composed in a polemical style all his own, unsettle as well as inform. - Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Indiana University

Edward Alexander is one of those rare academics whose prose is a delight to read. These richly informative and trenchantly critical essays, dating from 1986 to 2014, range widely over the landscape of contemporary Jewish denunciation of Israel. Most of his subjects see themselves as defenders of Enlightenment values against what they presume to be Jewish sectionalism and obscurantism. Alexander brilliantly dissects the ideological confusions and broken-backed arguments that litter this stance. To a non-Jew like myself, however, with few illusions left concerning the complicity of the present-day liberal-left with kinds of antisemitism that used to be the sole province of the extreme Right, there is also a good deal of pathos about these refugees from Judaism as they leap, with unerring agility, from the frying-pan into the fire. --Bernard Harrison, University of Utah and University of Sussex Edward Alexander is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand the culture wars raging among Jews in recent years. A knowledgeable guide to these fractious debates, and also an energetically engaged participant in many of them, Alexander writes as both critical analyst and intellectual combatant. His passionate, provocative essays, composed in a polemical style all his own, unsettle as well as inform. --Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Indiana University

Author Information

Edward Alexander is professor emeritus of English at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. He is the author of The Jewish Idea and Its Enemies, The Holocaust and the War of Ideas, Irving Howe: Socialist, Critic, Jew, and Lionel Trilling and Irving Howe.

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