On Jewish Studies and Jews’ Declining Popularity

Ruth Wisse talks with George E. Johnson about her childhood in Eastern Europe and Montreal, her development as a scholar of Yiddish literature and a public intellectual, and the place of Jews and of Jewish studies on American college campuses. On the last point, she comments:

In the same way that Jewish studies benefited at its beginnings by the opening-up of the universities [to new fields of study], the [current] atmosphere of multiculturalism . . . impacts Jewish studies negatively and has made Jewish studies much less popular. The Jews are not popular on campus, and when the Jews are not popular, when Judaism is not popular, when Israel is not popular, it’s not going to be the same. In the early days, Jewish studies was cutting-edge. It was wonderful. It represented the best of this new potential. It was riding a wave. Now it’s even more important because we are now trying to stem a tsunami of a different kind.

When I began teaching, my feeling about Jewish studies was that it was an enhancement of American civilization, that because America had been so inclusive of the Jews, it was just greater proof of the worth of American civilization. . . .

But you do not have any longer, on the part of universities, a commitment to strengthening the teaching of American civilization, of the Constitution, of American history, of the arguments that formed American life and thinking. . . . None of this is present. The real pain and the real fear is of the erosion of America itself.

Read more at Moment

More about: Academia, American Jewry, Israel & Zionism, Jewish studies, Montreal

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF