Equally interesting are the results of a recent survey of American Jewish opinion in Pennsylvania and in the swing districts of New York state. Even more noteworthy than their political opinions were respondents’ answers to questions about their religion. Maury Litwack and Bradley Honan write:

The results: Jewish voters are highly politically engaged and ready to cast what could be decisive ballots on election day. However, we also uncovered a noteworthy trend: Jewish people are reluctant to say they are Jewish.

Just as pollsters in recent elections have identified “shy” Trump voters, we are today picking up “shy” Jewish voters—those who are willing to participate in our polling calls, but who refuse to self-identify as Jewish to a stranger on the phone. Only when we altered the poll’s introduction to specify that we were polling the broader Jewish community about issues they are facing could we get many more Jewish voters—800 for the purposes of our survey—to pronounce their Judaism.

Overcoming that hurdle, we found that 56 percent of Pennsylvania Jewish voters and 66 percent of those in the New York districts say the events of October 7 have made them much more likely to vote in November. The rise of anti-Semitism, too, is increasing Jewish voter engagement: 67 percent of those polled in both Pennsylvania and New York say that factor makes them more likely to vote this fall.

While Jewish voters are a relatively small group nationally, they are very politically engaged, and are particularly influential in key states and districts that could well decide who controls the White House and Congress. . . . Candidates taking the Jewish vote for granted may well go down to defeat.

Reviewing Stranger Than Fiction, a new history of the 20th-century novel, Joseph Epstein draws attention to what’s missing:

A novelist and short-story writer who gets no mention whatsoever in Stranger Than Fiction is Isaac Bashevis Singer. When from time to time I am asked who among the writers of the past half century is likely to be read 50 years from now, Singer’s is the first name that comes to mind. His novels and stories can be sexy, but sex, unlike in many of the novels of Norman Mailer, William Styron, or Philip Roth, is never chiefly about sex. His stories are about that much larger subject, the argument of human beings with God. What Willa Cather and Isaac Bashevis Singer have that too few of the other novelists discussed in Stranger Than Fiction possess are central, important, great subjects.