One of the most contentious questions facing American Jewry today is why some of the most prominent Jewish voices opposing Zionism and defending anti-Israel activism have emerged from within the Jewish community itself
Jews of Privilege: Elites, Anti-Zionists, and Our Secret Civil War, by Benjamin Kerstein, argues that the phenomenon cannot be understood solely through the familiar language of ideology or politics. Kerstein examines the class divisions within contemporary Jewish life and argues that decades of unprecedented Jewish prosperity and assimilation have created an insulated elite increasingly detached from the historical experiences and concerns of less privileged Jews.
Drawing on two decades of life in Israel, as well as his own experience as an American-born Jew navigating these divisions, Kerstein combines social criticism, political analysis, and personal memoir to examine what he sees as an internal Jewish class conflict over Israel, Zionism, assimilation, and Jewish solidarity.
The book raises provocative questions:
- Why do some affluent American Jews appear more hostile toward Zionism than toward movements that are explicitly hostile to Jews or Israel?
- Has Jewish assimilation produced a class divide within American Jewry—and does that divide help explain contemporary Jewish anti-Zionism?
- Why have some Jews come to regard Jewish particularism and self-defense as morally suspect?
- What happens to Jewish solidarity when privilege creates distance from the historical experiences of other Jews?
- Can contemporary Jewish anti-Zionism be understood partly as a conflict between different Jewish social classes and historical experiences?
Jews of Privilege has received endorsements from a range of prominent writers and thinkers, including David J. Wolpe, Thane Rosenbaum, Einat Wilf, Ashley Rindsberg, Ben Cohen, Claire Berlinski, Izabella Tabarovsky, and Naya Lekht.
David J. Wolpe calls it “an eloquent and impassioned defense of the ‘non-privileged Jews’ who built Zionism and the Jewish state—and a provocative indictment of the Jewish elites who oppose them even today.”
Einat Wilf writes that Kerstein shows how “a few decades of fragile privilege have led many Jews to lose the muscle memory of what it means to be Jewish.”
The book is particularly timely amid the rise of antisemitism and the increasingly bitter disputes within American Jewish communities over Israel, Zionism, Jewish identity, and the boundaries of communal solidarity.
Jews of Privilege is ultimately an attempt to look beneath the surface of the current political arguments and ask a more difficult question: What is happening to Jewish identity itself?
Advance praise
“An eloquent and impassioned defense of the ‘non-privileged Jews’ who built Zionism and the Jewish state—and a provocative indictment of the Jewish elites who oppose them even today.”
—David J. Wolpe, author of Why Faith Matters
“Benjamin Kerstein has written a very brave and wildly enlightening book. There is an internal class war to be won, and Kerstein is quite certain who must claim victory.”
—Thane Rosenbaum, author of Beyond Proportionality
“In this important and insightful book Benjamin Kerstein points to the manner in which just a few decades of fragile privilege have led many Jews to lose the muscle memory of what it means to be Jewish. After reading this book, it should become much harder for those observing this phenomenon to mistake privilege for principle.”
—Einat Wilf, author of Teaching Zionism and Wartime Writings
“A powerful and essential account of how an American Jewish elite built a moral caste system around the issue of Israel, told through Kerstein’s own personal story of discovering and navigating this divide. Jews of Privilege looks beneath the surface politics at the deeper currents driving the American Jewish elite.”
—Ashley Rindsberg, award-winning journalist and author of The Gray Lady Winked
“Max Nordau told the First Zionist Congress in 1897 that ‘In order to produce its full effect, [Jewish] emancipation should first have been completed in sentiment before it was declared by law. But this was not the case.’ As Benjamin Kerstein demonstrates in this important book, it still isn’t the case even today. His achievement lies in helping us to understand why that is”
—Ben Cohen, Research Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
“A powerful book, one that challenges all those who would seek to deny the antizionist hatred that has reorganized the Jewish present.”
—Adam Louis-Klein, founder of MAAZ
“A vivid, personal, and provocative reinterpretation of modern Jewish political history through the lenses of class, assimilation, solidarity, and Zionism.”
—Claire Berlinski, editor-in-chief of The Cosmopolitan Globalist
“A blistering critique…Kerstein’s fresh analytical lens on Jewish anti-Zionism is precisely what this moment needs. Once you see the dynamic of class privilege and entitlement he describes, you cannot unsee it.”
—Izabella Tabarovsky, author of Be a Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide
“What makes Kerstein’s book so compelling is not simply its analysis. It is the way he brings his own story into dialogue with his subject matter. That tension, between proximity and distance, observation and experience, is what gives the book its particular force.”
—Naya Lekht, cofounder of Stop Antizionism
Jews of Privilege can be purchased at Amazon.
Bulk orders can be purchased at a discount by writing to orders@posthillpress.com.
