David L. Bernstein

A Jewish man in the United States who has always been involved with Jewish organizations writes about his change of understanding about how best to pursue Jewish interests and human good. He experienced some bullying in an anti-semitic mode when young and grew up to become involved in Jewish organizations in college and then professionally. Gradually, he came to realize that the activist organizations that Jewish organizations generally allied themselves with had an inherently anti-semitic ideology and more and more he felt that continuing to maintain these alliances was not in the best interests of Jews in the United States or in Israel. In 2021, after having been browbeaten on and off for a few years he decided to make a break and formed JILV (Jewish Institute for Liberal Values: https://jilv.org/) and in 2022 he published this book.

From this book I learned that there are a lot of Jewish organizations in the United States and that they generally do not have catchy names.

Also, I think that people who are harassed on the basis of something they actually are tend to focus on that thing, rather than on the fact that people just harass other people because they can and it is fun for them. I, for example, was frequently insulted in middle school for being a Quaker, although I was not, while the one girl who I knew was a Quaker seemed to never be insulted. My own theory of bigotry is that, while it exists, it is not always directed with a whole lot of precision at the sensible target, it is just a handy weapon. Most people have a limited suite of insults and insulting behaviors, and they just pick what they are good at and familiar with. I think that the reason anti-semitism is so prevalent among people who do not actually know much about Jews or have any substantive reason to dislike them is because the history of Jews makes bullying Jews just so easy for bullies. You do not even have to know what a Nazi was to know that a swastika is a good symbol to use to be mean to a Jew.

At present there are just five instances of this book available in Massachusetts libraries. I tracked them down:

* https://newton.minlib.net/Union/Search?view=list&lookfor=Woke+antisemitism+h...
- 2 copies, 3 holds
- Minuteman Network

* https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/search?query=woke%20antisemitism&searchType...
- 1 copy, out, no holds
- BPL

* https://eds.p.ebscohost.com/eds/results?vid=0&sid=25fc948c-2f0f-4bfa-aade-d8...
- 1 copy, out, can not
- UMass Amherst

* https://mvlc.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/lowell1/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$...
- 1 copy, out, no holds
- MVLC

If this book were a person on social media it would be yelling all the time about how it was being shadowbanned.… (más)