From the category archives:

The reveal

loving my mother, a 1 a.m. epiphany

by Philip Weiss on August 12, 2009 · 9 comments

A lot of the energy for my work comes out of my mother issues.

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What Madoff reveals about the new Jewish status

by Philip Weiss on June 30, 2009 · 20 comments

A couple months back at the 92d Street Y, someone on a panel said that Bernie Madoff could have happened to any community. I mocked the comment at the time because it was willful indifference (on the part of a person whose duty it is to make social observations) to this special Jewish moment in the American Establishment. Yes there are crooks in every ethnic/religious group; but the Madoff scandal was special in magnitude and character. It exposed the new Jewish place in America in a fresh way. We are equal partners in the Establishment. We have extremely wealthy kinship networks, and country clubs. And we tend to believe that other Jews will treat us more fairly than non-Jews. The credulity issue.

"Six Degrees of Separation" was John Guare's read on liberal credulity toward "good" black people, who would con them. And Madoff is about Jewish credulity in smart ethnocentric Jews, who would con them. 

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I have a good short conversation about the situation with my mom

by Philip Weiss29 June 2009

My mom and dad came through on the weekend. We had a good visit. I was wondering how Gaza would come up. My mother read my blog a little during my trip to Gaza earlier this month. It troubled her…

40 comments

a few thoughts ahead of my trip to the Middle East

by Philip Weiss22 May 2009

I’m dashing. I.e., this will be semi-coherent. The most important political Jew of the last century and more was Theodor Herzl, who struggled against all odds to start the Zionist movement for a Jewish state, based on his shock at…

71 comments

more on the error of ‘bad Jews’ deferring to ‘good Jews’

by Philip Weiss10 May 2009

My post yesterday about Being a bad Jew is really, as a friend pointed out, about being a secular Jew and feeling guilty about it, and the political consequences of that guilt. Later yesterday I remembered when I first felt…

9 comments

Memo to Bad Jews: Time to reclaim your Jewish identity and save the world

by Philip Weiss9 May 2009

When I was young, Jewish organizations put their feet down about the use of the terms “good Jew” and “bad Jew.” It was too divisive. But that didn’t make the issue go away. I always felt like a bad Jew:…

117 comments

AIPAC is all about Jewish history and power–and so is this web site

by Philip Weiss7 May 2009

At the end of the AIPAC policy conference, maybe during Joe Biden’s pandering speech, I sat biting into a napkin trying to keep from crying with a joyful sense of purpose that the conference had given me. This post is…

56 comments

how has Jewish culture influenced U.S. establishment culture?

by Philip Weiss29 April 2009

Every once in a while I do a post about how many Jews there are in American public life, trying to get more comfortable with talking about it. It’s fascinating on any number of levels, and no one talks about…

26 comments

a few thoughts about Jewish community

by Philip Weiss28 April 2009

A couple years ago I participated in a panel on Zionism at a synagogue on the Upper West Side. Dan Fleshler, who has a new book about the Israel lobby, helped arrange it. So did the progressive Zionist group, Meretz….

9 comments

What did Kafka get for his bar mitzvah?

by Philip Weiss27 April 2009

“Do you know, by the way, that you were given to me as a present for my Confirmation (there’s also something like a Jewish confirmation)? I was born in ‘83, so was 13 when you were born. The 13th birthday…

1 comment

What did Kafka get for his bar mitzvah?

by Philip Weiss27 April 2009

“Do you know, by the way, that you were given to me as a present for my Confirmation (there’s also something like a Jewish confirmation)? I was born in ‘83, so was 13 when you were born. The 13th birthday…

Kafka didn’t know that bar mitzvahs took place on Saturday

by Philip Weiss21 April 2009

This morning I read a Kafka letter from 1923, a year before he died, in which he apologized to his good friend Oskar Baum for missing his son’s bar mitzvah because he did not realize it was on a Saturday….

24 comments

scene from an intermarriage

by Philip Weiss20 April 2009

My wife and I are going to a friend’s house for dinner. In the country. I stopped in her office. “Hon, I’m not a WASP. Can I wear this?” I had on torn jeans. She looked me over and said,…

26 comments

My assimilationist reputation

by Philip Weiss18 April 2009

The other day I went on the New Republic site and saw some commenters dismissing me as an assimilationist Jew in connection with criticisms I’d made about the Gaza War. I’m not sure why my Jewish identity should affect the…

50 comments