From the category archives:

Jewish success

we have power

by Philip Weiss on March 16, 2010 · 27 comments

All six commentators quoted by the BBC, representing American views of the US-Israel impasse, are Jewish. This reflects many factors, culture, wealth, interest, but it’s also about a remarkable historical moment, of Jewish power.

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None dare call it a Jewish kinship network

by Philip Weiss on March 14, 2010 · 17 comments

Here’s a funny/weird story in the Times about NY Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s less-than-warm relationship with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Why doesn’t he like her? the story asks repeatedly. And meanwhile he likes the other NY Senator, Chuck Schumer, and is cozying up to both Mort Zuckerman and Dan Senor as possible Senate candidates to go after her.

I’d just like to point out that, notwithstanding the fact that Bloomberg is a modern man (with a girlfriend with Greenwich pedigree), he is, as I am, culturally more familiar with Jews than non-Jews– and all those politicians he’s friends with are Jewish. While Gillibrand is a shiksa. Is this meaningful? Of course it is. I got most of my work in journalism over the years from Jewish friends. We threw around Yiddish words as a shibboleth as the non-Jews stood there with their jaws hanging– till they learned to use Yiddish too!

Jews like to brag about how smart they are, but Jewish kinship networks are as strong as Tammany.

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what recession?

by Jeff Blankfort and Phil Weiss11 March 2010

JPost says IDF raised $20 million at the Waldorf the other night:

There was scarce evidence of the global recession at a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser for the IDF in New York City on Tuesday night.

If the $5.2 million in tax exempt dollars raised on behalf of the Friends of the IDF in Beverly Hills last December 17 [...]

6 comments

At J Street, two young Jews said they needed to talk about privilege (and so do I)

by Philip Weiss3 March 2010

Last fall during a social justice panel at J Street’s policy conference, a Wesleyan senior named Emily Hoffman said that she needed to talk about "privilege" in the Jewish community, and Alana Alpert, a rabbinical student, promptly echoed her: "I often feel the same way." I found the exchange liberating. It seemed that these young [...]

7 comments

‘LA Times’ says Republican rivals to challenge Senator Boxer are out-Israeling one another

by Philip Weiss3 March 2010

Jacob Heilbrunn covers the argument among Republicans over the Israel bona fides of Tom Campbell, the likely Republican nominee to take on Barbara Boxer. Note a few points: As the LA Times says, it’s all about Israel. This is a reflection of one thing, Jewish power in the American political process, at least in California [...]

15 comments

Rahm: Just hanging on?

by Bruce Wolman2 March 2010

There was finally a shake up over at the White House this weekend. No, Rahm neither resigned nor was axed. Instead, Social Secretary Desiree Rogers became "the first high-level departure from Obama’s senior staff."
WaPo spends more than enough ink presenting reasons for the departure of the outside-the-Beltway African-American black businesswoman and Obama friend. We will [...]

18 comments

David Brooks’s dilemma (and ours)

by Scott McConnell21 February 2010

Consider one of David Brooks’ dilemmas. In last Friday’s Times he wrote a pretty good column about the contemporary American power elite. As he described it, sixty and more years ago, blue blood WASPs ran America’s financial institutions and foreign policy (something of a simplification, but let it pass), ethnic bosses ran the cities, [...]

47 comments

Overwhelming # of Jews on the beat is evidence of ‘longterm structural bias’

by Philip Weiss16 February 2010

Yesterday on this site, Bruce Wolman, a Jew, did a great post where he pointed out that nearly everyone on Obama’s Israel-Palestine negotiation team is Jewish.
I know: that’s uncomfortable. But is it relevant? Yes.
Here is Jonathan Cook skilfully navigating the same territory around the fact that all the Times reporters in Jerusalem [...]

10 comments

Let me not to Wieseltier’s fulsome toast of a power marriage admit impediments

by Philip Weiss11 February 2010

The flip side of Leon Wieseltier’s vicious-turgid attack on Andrew Sullivan is a toast he made to Samantha Power and Cass Sunstein– then-Harvard powerhouses, today Obama aides– when they got married in Ireland a year and a half ago. Wieseltier was so proud of the toast he sent it out by email to friends. As [...]

21 comments

Jews aren’t smarter (I lift my curse, and yours)

by Philip Weiss10 February 2010

A few years ago when she was working for a home magazine, my wife got a feng shui expert into our house to rejigger our energy and when the expert saw me in my office, she said the assignment was about fixing me, my life was out of control. Catherine did my chart and we [...]

66 comments

Steve Walt feels vindicated by Blair confession (as well he should)

by Philip Weiss9 February 2010

Steve Walt has a great post following the news from Tony Blair that when he was planning the Iraq war disaster with George Bush they consulted the Israelis, and that Israeli security was a consideration. Walt feels vindicated on the most controversial claim of his book, that the Israel lobby pushed the Iraq war. Here’s [...]

34 comments

there I go, counting Jewish names again

by Philip Weiss7 February 2010

It is impossible to discuss the action of the Israel lobby in our foreign policy without acknowledging a sociological reality: Jews are big winners of the meritocracy, we are the richest group by religion in the U.S. I have to keep hitting this point because a, no one talks about it out of fear of [...]

30 comments

Jews are rich elitists, ‘Commentary’ says

by Philip Weiss6 February 2010

Last month Commentary published a piece called "Why Jews Hate Palin" that I greatly appreciated. Written by Jennifer Rubin, the piece directly addressed sociological issues that I often raise about my tribe: we’re incredibly privileged, and not very humble, and our political values tend to be circumscribed geographically and class-wise. Rubin was even more unsparing [...]

45 comments

status, radicalism, & happiness

by Philip Weiss6 February 2010

I grew up in a liberal Jewish academic community. Everyone was smart, everyone did well. My parents’ friends are in their late 70s/80s now and all have two houses and good lifestyles. Yet they regard themselves as Jewish outsiders– an understanding cemented by their youthful experience of anti-Semitism.
The other day I went to see a [...]

20 comments

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