Jeffrey Goldberg Doesn’t Speak for the Jews

[Blackjack200]

Really like this piece from David Klion about the lead editor of the Atlantic and his position in elite politics as the American Jewish and broader American cultures shift left. IMO, elite liberals are similar to neoconservatives in that they're propped up by monied interests, but serve no real constituency of voters.

https://jewishcurrents.org/essay/jeffrey-goldberg-doesnt-speak-for-the-jews

Jeffrey Goldberg Doesn’t Speak for the Jews
The editor of The Atlantic represents the failure of the liberal establishment.

Where has this Atlantic-style liberalism, personified by Goldberg, led us? As Americans, it left us blindsided by Trump and the unchecked power of the far-right GOP over the entire federal government, not to mention a sprawling military empire whose growth The Atlantic has encouraged and justified. As Jews, it has bound us to a reactionary ethnostate that has abandoned any pretext of peace, of democracy, and even of serving as a homeland for Jews who aren’t comfortable with its current political drift. As young people, it has offered little in the way of fresh ideas.

Living in Brooklyn, where Goldberg was born but not raised, and where my own lineage goes back over a century, has put me in touch with a strain of Jewish identity I only glancingly encountered in Washington: proudly left, proudly Jewish, proudly secular, and proudly diasporic. It’s taken me well into my thirties to grasp that there is a Jewishness to be located between the synagogue-attending, aggressively Zionist establishment that Goldberg presents to the most powerful people on Earth as definitive, and the superficial bagels-and-Seinfeld gloss on basic American whiteness that often seems like the only alternative. Jewishness can be righteous, confrontational, progressive, maybe even cool. It doesn’t have to be defined as a religion, a nationality, or a vaguely embarrassing set of quirks; it can be a way of asserting one’s humanity and moral fervor as America, Israel, and the world descend into a crude parody of fascism.

Jeffrey Goldberg may have his magazine, his gilded ideas conference, his comfortable DC bubble, and a rolodex that will guarantee him a seat on a C-130 should the apocalypse arrive earlier than expected. But he doesn’t have the next generation of American Jews, and in spite of his best efforts, he can’t tell us what to believe.

 

[senseamp]

Yep, they are alienating lots of potential members from the Jewish community. To me it feels like, sign up to unconditionally support Israel, even when they basically steal land and push apartheid policies through, or you are not welcome.

 

[hal2kilo]

Really like this piece from David Klion about the lead editor of the Atlantic and his position in elite politics as the American Jewish and broader American cultures shift left. IMO, elite liberals are similar to neoconservatives in that they're propped up by monied interests, but serve no real constituency of voters.

https://jewishcurrents.org/essay/jeffrey-goldberg-doesnt-speak-for-the-jews

Jeffrey Goldberg Doesn’t Speak for the Jews
The editor of The Atlantic represents the failure of the liberal establishment.

Seems the article doesn't prove his point. And there's a lot of hand wringing and whining about liberals. Please elaborate.

 

[Blackjack200]

Seems the article doesn't prove his point. And there's a lot of hand wringing and whining about liberals. Please elaborate.

Which point, that Goldberg doesn't speak for American Jews? I think the article persuasively makes that point.

 

[hal2kilo]

The point I get is that David Klion doesn't like Jeffrey Goldberg and says he does not speak for Jews. How does he not speak for Jews was not explained in any detail..

 

[Moonbeam]

My simple minded idea of what a Jew is is a person who has deep personal experience with bigotry for differences and has grown wise and liberal in his or her realization of the tremendous threat that kind of bigotry is for humanity. That same bigotry can lead to liberal thinking and a desire to arm oneself to the teeth and defend oneself against that bigotry, creating more of it.

 

[Blackjack200]

The point I get is that David Klion doesn't like Jeffrey Goldberg and says he does not speak for Jews. How does he not speak for Jews was not explained in any detail..

Klion is writing about a cultural shift, which is kind of a nebulous idea. If you didn't find it convincing, I don't think there's anything I can offer you beyond what's in the essay.

 

[woolfe9998]

Which point, that Goldberg doesn't speak for American Jews? I think the article persuasively makes that point.

No one person speaks for "American Jews" or, for that matter, any other ethnic group. I suppose his point is correct so far as it goes, but if that is the main point, the article has no reason to exist because the point is too obvious for words.

 

[Blackjack200]

No one person speaks for "American Jews" or, for that matter, any other ethnic group. I suppose his point is correct so far as it goes, but if that is the main point, the article has no reason to exist because the point is too obvious for words.

Too clever by half. You should have told Obama:

In May 2008, Goldberg first interviewed Barack Obama for The Atlantic. At the time, Obama’s past connections to figures like Rashid Khalidi, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and Bill Ayers, along with his partially Muslim ancestry, had engendered suspicion among certain parts of the Jewish community. Goldberg offered himself as an arbiter of whether the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee passed muster with the Jews, “particularly,” he wrote, “those in such places as–-to pull an example from the air–-Palm Beach County, Florida, whose Jewish residents tend to appreciate robust American support for Israel, and worry about whether presidential candidates feel the importance of Israel in their kishkes, or guts.”

His test of loyalty was quite explicit: “Go to the kishke question, the gut question: the idea that if Jews know that you love them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don’t know you—Jim Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski—then everything is suspect,” Goldberg explained to the future president, before launching into a series of questions designed to determine whether Obama adequately loved Israel. Obama successfully pandered to Goldberg, who noted, “speaking in a kind of code Jews readily understand, Obama also made sure to mention that he was fond of the writer Leon Uris, the author of [the 1958 Zionist pulp bestseller] Exodus.”

Did you read the article?

 

[IronWing]

I would like it noted that at this time I also don't speak for the Jews. If they are hiring, maybe the future will bring a different arrangement.