Why Being a ‘Bad Jew’ Is No Longer Bad for Jewish Americans

"One of the tensions in American Jewish history is navigating the extent to which American Jews want it to be distinct."Credit: AP

“If there’s one thing that keeps me up at night,

it’s not Iran but the future of the Jews in America.”

Naftali Bennett, Israel’s Former Prime Minister

Charlottesville, the Tree of Life synagogue massacre, the Iranian nuclear deal, the Trump administration’s take on Jews, arguments over Israel – the past few years seem to have been especially fraught for Jewish Americans.

In her book coming out Tuesday, “Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities,” Emily Tamkin tackles these issues by looking critically into the past, shattering myths about Jewish life in America and highlighting age-old issues still shaping Jewish identity.

Tamkin already has an important work behind her: “The Influence of Soros” (2020) on the controversies surrounding the right wing’s favorite straw man, Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist George Soros. Tamkin is also a senior editor at the London-based New Statesman.

“In recent years, there has been a worrying uptick in antisemitic attacks, by and large coming from the right. I think this has led to some dissonance with mainstream Jewish organizations, which are very much invested in treating antisemitism as though it comes from left and right,” Tamkin says.

“Of course, it does, but not at all to the same extent. This is because, if you look at how antisemitic tropes are mobilized in the U.S., it always works in concert with other hatreds: Islamophobia, xenophobia and general racism.”

In “Bad Jew,” Tamkin stresses that the reasons for antisemitism in the United States are different from those in Europe. A key is the history of Jewish assimilation in America.

“It’s important to note that most American Jews, especially those of European descent, for all intents and purposes go through life as white Americans,” Tamkin says. “That doesn’t mean that throughout history in the U.S. there wasn’t discrimination on a more informal level. And there have been waves of antisemitism sweeping society, especially during the two world wars.”

Protesters in New York against Ben & Jerry's decision to stop selling its ice cream in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, August 2021.Credit: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images/AFP

But she adds that “for the most part, American Jews had rights and privileges that were denied, for instance, to Black Americans. That’s because the United States does not really understand or even care to understand ethnicity. What the United States understands well is race.”

Mainstream American Jewish leaders realized that it would benefit American Jews to be considered white, even as immigration quotas were being implemented, Tamkin argues.

“This is a generalization, but for many American Jews, it was understood that we could live like other white Americans, except that we go to synagogue and not to church. There’s less room to understand what it meant to be Jewish outside the synagogue,” she says.

“I think one of the tensions in American Jewish history is navigating the extent to which American Jews want it to be distinct. Do you want to fit in and have that security and chance of prosperity? To have those rights and privileges? Or do you want to embrace your distinctiveness, your traditions and your own identity? And that back and forth, I think, has shaped how we understand ourselves.”

Tamkin sees this as the gist behind the term “bad Jew.” It’s not about outside forces blaming Jews for societal woes but a unique intercommunal clash: religious versus secular tendencies, reactionary versus progressive politics, and clashes over everyday values.

The March 1965 march from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama, including Martin Luther King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, front, second from right.Credit: AP

Activism and suburbanization

From The Jewish Daily Forward to the Workers Circle organization to activists pushing for workers’ rights after the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire of 1911, American Judaism has been seen as steeped in political consciousness and activism. Few images are as enduring as that of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel linking arms with leaders including Martin Luther King during the 1965 march from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama. But in the new book, this legacy is complicated.

“Yes, American Jews were overrepresented in the civil rights movement. But also, it’s true that even while Jews are participating in the civil rights movement, you have other American Jews who say, well, wait a minute, we should be for ourselves,” Tamkin says.

“After World War II, an enormous amount moved out to the suburbs, to neighborhoods where Black Americans couldn’t; on many occasions, they moved because Black Americans moved into those neighborhoods. Likewise, American Jews’ relationship with affirmative action, especially American Jewish men to affirmative action, was fraught. All of these things are true at the same time.”

Tamkin dedicates a chapter to the Jewish backlash against progressive Judaism; this movement is embodied by two giants on the right – one is the godfather of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, who saw a Jewish struggle for equality as a radical war on the middle class. The other is former Commentary Editor-in-Chief Norman Podhoretz, whose 1967 essay “My Negro Problem – and Ours” used his personal experience to cast a veil of ambivalence over Jews’ commitment to civil rights.

“We can’t just check a box just because American Jews participated in the civil rights movement. We can’t pretend that some in the Jewish community are somehow not implicated in America’s white supremacy or racial hierarchies.”

The influence of these thinkers not only endures with their sons – Bill Kristol, a former chief of staff to George W. Bush, and John Podhoretz, who now has his father’s old job at Commentary. There’s also Sheldon Adelson, the late casino mogul and donor to the Republicans and Israel, and Stephen Miller, a senior adviser in the Trump White House. American Jewish identity is shaped as much by Jared Kushner as by Bernie Sanders.

Not just about Israel

In her book, Tamkin traces the American Jewish community’s attitudes on the Zionist movement and Israel, whether ambivalence, adulation or disapproval. These sentiments ebbed and flowed throughout the 20th century, reaching new heights of discord more recently.

The cover of Emily Tamkin's "Bad Jews"Credit: Courtesy of the author

“In the pre-establishment of Israel, especially pre-World War II, there was a real unease with the concept of Zionism, partly because of the trope of dual loyalty and American Jews not wanting to be seen as anything other than American,” she says. “After World War II and the revelations about what happened in Europe, you have incredible guilt on the part of many American Jews. But for the timing of a boat, American Jews realized it could have been them or their brothers and sisters; in some cases, it was.”

So, Tamkin says, there was increasing support for the Zionist movement and the establishment of Israel. Only after the 1967 Six-Day War did the majority of the American Jewish community mobilize around Israel as a singular cause to identify with.

“Contrary to popular belief, I would push back against the idea that adulation or condemnation of Israel is all that’s left of American Jewishness, based on every survey that comes out suggesting that younger American Jews are more comfortable being critical of Israel. Since the Six-Day War, the Jewish-American community and Israeli politics have not been moving in the same direction. ... Yes, Israel is an issue with which many American Jews are completely consumed, and they identify their version of American Judaism or American Jewishness. But there is less consensus on what that identification means,” Tamkin says.

“At the end of the day, we’re not the same, and the gaps are growing. Even if, let’s say, Israel was the most progressive, equitable, human-rights-focused place on Earth, it would still be a different identity.”

Jewish members of the House of Peace initiative greeting Muslim worshippers at the Islamic Center at New York University, November 2019.Credit: Danielle Ziri

Intermarriage or Iran

The book explores the political divides but doesn’t skimp on the religious ones either. It’s clear that many U.S. Jews' embrace of Reform Judaism has pitted them against Israel more than it has created a divide in the American Jewish community.

“Most liberal Americans want to continue to believe in Israel to continue to be invested in Israel,” Tamkin says. “But because the reality is that the largest Jewish denomination in the United States is the Reform movement, offering solidarity with Israel will become tougher to justify” – a situation the occupation doesn't help.

Or as Naftali Bennett, who three years later would become prime minister, said of American Jewry and the specter of intermarriage: “If there’s one thing that keeps me up at night, it’s not Iran but the future of the Jews in America.”

Reading Tamkin’s book, it becomes clear that the divide is unlike that in Israel, where religion is centralized and aligned with national laws, politics and education. In the United States, over the 20th and 21st centuries, Jewish practice and identity have increasingly become decentralized.

“You have certain communities, particularly the traditional Orthodox community. You have Reform Jews and unaffiliated who don’t see a discrepancy between intermarriage and leading a meaningful Jewish life, and they're engaged in progressive or left-wing causes,” Tamkin says.

“Then you have a myriad of small communities, like queer Jews creating Talmud study for themselves or people looking at more egalitarian Orthodox spaces because they want the depth of knowledge that comes with the practice of Orthodox Judaism, but they don’t want the gender rigidity. People creating more of their own spaces and institutions and organizations is increasing in defiance of any firm definitions.”

When asked how it’s possible to offer solidarity in such a decentralized environment, Tamkin says, “I don’t think there’s such a thing as a national American Jewish identity, which I think is fine. I’m personally not threatened by that at all. That said, I think we need to extend solidarity to one another in the face of antisemitism.

“Even with all the differences with a traditionally Orthodox person who only votes for conservative candidates and thinks I’m a bad Jew for intermarrying, it’s on me to speak out against antisemitic attacks against that person.”

As Tamkin puts it, one of the paradoxes of pluralism is that you have to be committed to it even when other people aren’t.

“There are going to be people who will read this book and disagree with it, maybe, or who read this book and don’t think that I’m Jewish enough, or don’t think that I’m Jewish the right way, or don’t think that I’m Jewish at all. And it's still incumbent on me to consider those people Jewish, to care about what happens to them. And to go from there.”