To understand the future of the Arab-Israeli conflict, argues Gil Troy, we must better understand its past. Israel has not faced a coordinated military attack from the Arab world in nearly half a century; it has instead contended with a series of peace processes punctuated by terrorism. Israel’s periodic conflicts with Arab groups no longer reflect a neat division between the Jewish state and its neighbors. By telling Israel’s story through the decades rather than primarily through its wars, Troy argues, we will be able to place Palestinian violence, anti-Israel propaganda, the Abraham Accords, and other significant facets of Israeli history in their proper context.

In the 1930s, a Republic Jewish judge, observing his coreligionists’ commitment to the Democratic party, quipped, in Yiddish, that Jews have three velt (worlds): di velt (this world), yene velt (the next world), and Roosevelt. Since then, Jewish devotion has attenuated somewhat, although Jews still overwhelming lean Democratic. Most American Jews, however, are unfamiliar with the terms “this world” or “the next world” in any language. Carefully examining a wealth of statistical data, Samuel J. Abrams and Jack Wertheimer argue that the sort of robust Jewish liberalism that characterized U.S. Jewry a few decades ago is in steep decline. Jews, they explain, are undergoing their own version of what political scientists call the “great sort,” whereby politics, religion, and place of residence increasingly align: