Jews of Privilege: Elites, Anti-Zionists, and Our Secret Civil War - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

An examination of the class roots of Jewish anti-Zionism and anti-Israel activism, revealing how it ultimately fosters self-hatred and self-destruction.

In an era of rising antisemitism, a troubling phenomenon has emerged: Some of the most vocal apologists for hatred of Jews and Israel are Jews themselves. In Jews of Privilege, author Benjamin Kerstein investigates this striking and unsettling trend, exposing an affluent, insulated elite at the top of American Jewry’s unspoken class system.

These Jews of privilege, he argues, are detached from and often disdainful of their fellow Jews, acting—knowingly or not—as defenders of those who wish them harm. Drawing on two decades of life in Israel and his own experiences as an American-born outsider to this privileged world, Kerstein presents a penetrating portrait of an elite that is destroying itself from within.

Part social critique, part personal memoir, Jews of Privilege is a provocative and timely exploration of class, identity, and betrayal within the Jewish experience today.

“An eloquent and impassioned defense of the ‘non-privileged Jews’ who built Zionism and the Jewish state—and a provocative indictment of the Jewish elites who oppose them even today.”
—David J. Wolpe, author of Why Faith Matters

“Benjamin Kerstein has written a very brave and wildly enlightening book. There is an internal class war to be won, and Kerstein is quite certain who must claim victory.”
—Thane Rosenbaum, author of Beyond Proportionality

“In this important and insightful book Benjamin Kerstein points to the manner in which just a few decades of fragile privilege have led many Jews to lose the muscle memory of what it means to be Jewish. After reading this book, it should become much harder for those observing this phenomenon to mistake privilege for principle.”
—Einat Wilf, author of Teaching Zionism and Wartime Writings

“A powerful and essential account of how an American Jewish elite built a moral caste system around the issue of Israel, told through Kerstein's own personal story of discovering and navigating this divide. Jews of Privilege looks beneath the surface politics at the deeper currents driving the American Jewish elite.”
—Ashley Rindsberg, award-winning journalist and author of The Gray Lady Winked

“Max Nordau told the First Zionist Congress in 1897 that 'In order to produce its full effect, [Jewish] emancipation should first have been completed in sentiment before it was declared by law. But this was not the case.' As Benjamin Kerstein demonstrates in this important book, it still isn't the case even today. His achievement lies in helping us to understand why that is”
—Ben Cohen, Research Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

“A powerful book, one that challenges all those who would seek to deny the antizionist hatred that has reorganized the Jewish present.”
—Adam Louis-Klein, founder of MAAZ

“A vivid, personal, and provocative reinterpretation of modern Jewish political history through the lenses of class, assimilation, solidarity, and Zionism.”
—Claire Berlinski, editor-in-chief of The Cosmopolitan Globalist

“A blistering critique…Kerstein’s fresh analytical lens on Jewish anti-Zionism is precisely what this moment needs. Once you see the dynamic of class privilege and entitlement he describes, you cannot unsee it.”
—Izabella Tabarovsky, author of Be a Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide

“What makes Kerstein’s book so compelling is not simply its analysis. It is the way he brings his own story into dialogue with his subject matter. That tension, between proximity and distance, observation and experience, is what gives the book its particular force.”
—Naya Lekht, cofounder of Stop Antizionism

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