Joel S.
@joelhs.bsky.social
Professor of Religion and Jewish Studies, Sarah Lawrence College. PhD in Religious Studies, University of Chicago. Globalist elite and Thing-in-Itself-hating Jew. Husband of @petticoatshrink.bsky.social. He/Him/הוא/ער
A group of Jewish faculty and staff at my college wrote an open letter, about what it means to be torn between one side that thinks acknowledging antisemitism on campus means shutting down academic freedom, and another that responds by denying it exists: sarahlawrencephoenix.com/features-arc...
Open Letter from Faculty and Staff — The Phoenix
The Editorial Board of The Phoenix received this open letter from a group of Sarah Lawrence professors and faculty, signed below, with the request that we publish it on their behalf.
sarahlawrencephoenix.com
November 10, 2025 at 6:36 PM
A group of Jewish faculty and staff at my college wrote an open letter, about what it means to be torn between one side that thinks acknowledging antisemitism on campus means shutting down academic freedom, and another that responds by denying it exists: sarahlawrencephoenix.com/features-arc...
I'm extremely busy for the remainder of my semester, so I will not be posting much for the foreseeable future, with the possible exception of links to any articles I publish. Will be back at some point after the semester ends.
November 9, 2025 at 8:21 PM
I'm extremely busy for the remainder of my semester, so I will not be posting much for the foreseeable future, with the possible exception of links to any articles I publish. Will be back at some point after the semester ends.
My article on the Trump administration's targeting of Judith Butler, a prominent Jewish academic, in the name of "fighting antisemitism," was translated into French for a French publication, which is very exciting. www.courrierinternational.com/article/opin...
Mobilisons-nous pour Judith Butler, cible du gouvernement Trump !
Le nom de cette grande figure intellectuelle juive fait partie des 160 livrés au gouvernement par l’université de Berkeley dans le cadre d’une enquête portant s...
www.courrierinternational.com
November 9, 2025 at 2:58 PM
My article on the Trump administration's targeting of Judith Butler, a prominent Jewish academic, in the name of "fighting antisemitism," was translated into French for a French publication, which is very exciting. www.courrierinternational.com/article/opin...
We cannot just move on from this. There need to be legal consequences for everyone who made this happen. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/w...
‘You Are All Terrorists’: Four Months in a Salvadoran Prison
www.nytimes.com
November 9, 2025 at 5:08 AM
We cannot just move on from this. There need to be legal consequences for everyone who made this happen. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/w...
Good piece: www.thenation.com/article/poli...
Nick Fuentes Has Officially Breached the MAGA Gates
How the right’s crisis over US support for Israel has provided the white nationalist with the opening he needs to be welcomed into the MAGA fold.
www.thenation.com
November 8, 2025 at 8:51 PM
Good piece: www.thenation.com/article/poli...
The Heritage Foundation, which is staffing the US presidential administration, has spent the past two weeks mainstreaming actual neo-Nazis into American public life, and much of the American Jewish establishment is panicking about a Muslim mayor of New York City.
November 8, 2025 at 8:24 PM
The Heritage Foundation, which is staffing the US presidential administration, has spent the past two weeks mainstreaming actual neo-Nazis into American public life, and much of the American Jewish establishment is panicking about a Muslim mayor of New York City.
Apparently in the final weeks of the Biden administration, Biden's Secretary of State raised the possibility that Israel was committing ethnic cleansing - but the administration did not change its policies in result. www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-...
Biden Discussed Potential Israeli War Crimes In Gaza. He Kicked The Can To Trump.
New intelligence shocked officials in late 2024, spurring heightened fear of U.S. liability, HuffPost has learned. The period saw Secretary of State Antony Blinken ask if Israel’s actions constituted ...
www.huffpost.com
November 8, 2025 at 8:05 PM
Apparently in the final weeks of the Biden administration, Biden's Secretary of State raised the possibility that Israel was committing ethnic cleansing - but the administration did not change its policies in result. www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-...
This is really not a healthy response to "Zohran Mamdani condemned swastikas drawn on a Jewish day school in Brooklyn." Which is not actually something that has to do with Zionism at all. It is bad that parts of the left are becoming this conspiratorial and unmoored from evidence.
November 8, 2025 at 7:49 PM
This is really not a healthy response to "Zohran Mamdani condemned swastikas drawn on a Jewish day school in Brooklyn." Which is not actually something that has to do with Zionism at all. It is bad that parts of the left are becoming this conspiratorial and unmoored from evidence.
Mamdani embodies a pro-Palestinian politics that truly distinguishes between the state of Israel and the Jewish people, and truly takes antisemitism seriously as its own problem. That makes him a threat to those who want to absolutely conflate antisemitism and anti-Zionism, whether the ADL or WoL.
The pro-Palestine group Within Our Lifetime has already decided that Zohran Mamdani has sold out the pro-Palestine cause... by condemning swastikas drawn on a Jewish day school in Brooklyn. forward.com/culture/7822...
Mamdani's first statement on antisemitism as mayor-elect got some weird pushback
After someone spraypainted a swastika on a yeshiva, Zohran Mamdani condemned antisemitism. Somehow, this generated conspiracy theories.
forward.com
November 8, 2025 at 7:38 PM
Mamdani embodies a pro-Palestinian politics that truly distinguishes between the state of Israel and the Jewish people, and truly takes antisemitism seriously as its own problem. That makes him a threat to those who want to absolutely conflate antisemitism and anti-Zionism, whether the ADL or WoL.
Two sides of my Jewish family are fighting this weekend over who voted for Mamdani, and who did not.
November 8, 2025 at 5:46 PM
Two sides of my Jewish family are fighting this weekend over who voted for Mamdani, and who did not.
If you’re fighting to get out of having to feed poor people and children, you should probably ask yourself if you’re the bad guy.
The fate of SNAP was once again in question on Saturday after the Supreme Court temporarily agreed to allow the Trump administration to withhold full aid under the food stamp program.
Supreme Court Ruling on SNAP Benefits Leaves Families in Limbo
The fate of SNAP was once again in question on Saturday after the Supreme Court temporarily agreed to allow the Trump administration to withhold full aid under the program.
nyti.ms
November 8, 2025 at 5:37 PM
If you’re fighting to get out of having to feed poor people and children, you should probably ask yourself if you’re the bad guy.
I do not believe that anti-Zionism is antisemitic, and I have consistently argued against those who say it is, but if you see the act of condemning anti-Diaspora antisemitism as inherently Zionist and pro-Israel, you are really telling on yourself.
The pro-Palestine group Within Our Lifetime has already decided that Zohran Mamdani has sold out the pro-Palestine cause... by condemning swastikas drawn on a Jewish day school in Brooklyn. forward.com/culture/7822...
Mamdani's first statement on antisemitism as mayor-elect got some weird pushback
After someone spraypainted a swastika on a yeshiva, Zohran Mamdani condemned antisemitism. Somehow, this generated conspiracy theories.
forward.com
November 8, 2025 at 3:59 PM
I do not believe that anti-Zionism is antisemitic, and I have consistently argued against those who say it is, but if you see the act of condemning anti-Diaspora antisemitism as inherently Zionist and pro-Israel, you are really telling on yourself.
The pro-Palestine group Within Our Lifetime has already decided that Zohran Mamdani has sold out the pro-Palestine cause... by condemning swastikas drawn on a Jewish day school in Brooklyn. forward.com/culture/7822...
Mamdani's first statement on antisemitism as mayor-elect got some weird pushback
After someone spraypainted a swastika on a yeshiva, Zohran Mamdani condemned antisemitism. Somehow, this generated conspiracy theories.
forward.com
November 8, 2025 at 3:58 PM
The pro-Palestine group Within Our Lifetime has already decided that Zohran Mamdani has sold out the pro-Palestine cause... by condemning swastikas drawn on a Jewish day school in Brooklyn. forward.com/culture/7822...
I think about this often.
!["The title of the film for the Swedish release uses the translation of the name of the play within the story, Springtime for Hitler. As a result of its success, most of Mel Brooks's subsequent films in Swedish were given similar titles, despite being otherwise unrelated: Springtime for Mother-In-Law, Springtime for the Sheriff, Springtime for Frankenstein, Springtime for the Silent Movies, Springtime for the Lunatics, Springtime for World History, Springtime for Space, and Springtime for the Slum.[29] The practice ended by the time Robin Hood: Men in Tights was released, at Brooks's request."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cmvc2f5b5fou3ijbgagiovlj/bafkreigspzsxhx2jgwnlvrmgkzyenlwal2wrxbzkrqqmree5c55z6os6n4@jpeg)
November 8, 2025 at 3:25 AM
I think about this often.
In the name of "fighting antisemitism," Indiana University appointed a Christian scholar to tell Jewish scholars what they can and cannot say - all while they invited Tucker Carlson to speak on campus. www.jta.org/2025/11/07/u...
In Indiana, a vaunted Jewish studies program is upended by red-state politics over Israel and speech - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
A leadership shakeup, a defunded graduate student and political pressure from above have turned a storied program into a flashpoint for Trump-era campus politics.
www.jta.org
November 8, 2025 at 3:22 AM
In the name of "fighting antisemitism," Indiana University appointed a Christian scholar to tell Jewish scholars what they can and cannot say - all while they invited Tucker Carlson to speak on campus. www.jta.org/2025/11/07/u...
One government run by genocide deniers targeting another.
Turkey has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and dozens of other Israeli officials on “genocide” charges.
Turkey issues ‘genocide’ arrest warrants against Netanyahu and other Israeli officials | CNN
Turkey on Friday issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and dozens of other Israeli officials on “genocide” charges.
www.cnn.com
November 8, 2025 at 2:28 AM
One government run by genocide deniers targeting another.
This is a horrifying sign for the future of Jewish Studies as an academic discipline in the United States. We have to fight to defend our academic freedom. www.jta.org/2025/11/07/u...
In Indiana, a vaunted Jewish studies program is upended by red-state politics over Israel and speech - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
A leadership shakeup, a defunded graduate student and political pressure from above have turned a storied program into a flashpoint for Trump-era campus politics.
www.jta.org
November 7, 2025 at 10:37 PM
This is a horrifying sign for the future of Jewish Studies as an academic discipline in the United States. We have to fight to defend our academic freedom. www.jta.org/2025/11/07/u...
Gut Shabbos and Shabbat Shalom especially to everyone who understands, now more than ever, that Jewish safety will not come from spreading Islamophobia and othering other communities.
November 7, 2025 at 10:22 PM
Gut Shabbos and Shabbat Shalom especially to everyone who understands, now more than ever, that Jewish safety will not come from spreading Islamophobia and othering other communities.
“For a state that claims to be a Jewish state for all Jews, if you just show up one day and stand in support of Palestinians by doing something as basic as picking olives together, actually, then your Jewishness is irrelevant.” www.timesofisrael.com/banned-from-...
Banned from Israel for 10 years, US Jewish peace activist feels ‘sense of betrayal’
Leila Stillman-Utterback, 18, says her deportation for entering closed military zone to help Palestinians facing settler violence sends message that, for Israeli authorites, she's not 'right kind of J...
www.timesofisrael.com
November 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM
“For a state that claims to be a Jewish state for all Jews, if you just show up one day and stand in support of Palestinians by doing something as basic as picking olives together, actually, then your Jewishness is irrelevant.” www.timesofisrael.com/banned-from-...
People sometimes ask me why, at a time of rising antisemitism around the world, I do not look to the state of Israel as a possible place to go for safety. Putting aside the fact that it is far from clear I would be safer there, I am increasingly unsure they would even let me in.
November 7, 2025 at 7:23 PM
People sometimes ask me why, at a time of rising antisemitism around the world, I do not look to the state of Israel as a possible place to go for safety. Putting aside the fact that it is far from clear I would be safer there, I am increasingly unsure they would even let me in.
It is, indeed, hard to make friends when you are openly disrespectful and cruel to everyone you meet just to prove an ideological point.
November 7, 2025 at 6:34 PM
It is, indeed, hard to make friends when you are openly disrespectful and cruel to everyone you meet just to prove an ideological point.
This is so depressing.
Cornell agrees to include Bondi's anti-DEI/anti-trans memo as a "training resource to faculty and staff" (see: www.justice.gov/ag/media/140...)
November 7, 2025 at 5:48 PM
This is so depressing.
Think the marriage of convenience between the historically antisemitic far-right and the Israeli right has been bad for Diaspora Jews? Wait until you see the divorce.
For a decade, political support for Israel has come from conservative Christians. But now isolationism and antisemitism are changing the tone. n.pr/47IHdkv
Support for Israel among U.S. conservatives is starting to crack. Here's why
For a decade, political support for Israel has come from conservative Christians. But now isolationism and antisemitism are changing the tone.
n.pr
November 7, 2025 at 4:12 PM
Think the marriage of convenience between the historically antisemitic far-right and the Israeli right has been bad for Diaspora Jews? Wait until you see the divorce.
Christian philosemitism and antisemitism were always only separated by an incredibly thin line.
For a decade, political support for Israel has come from conservative Christians. But now isolationism and antisemitism are changing the tone. n.pr/47IHdkv
Support for Israel among U.S. conservatives is starting to crack. Here's why
For a decade, political support for Israel has come from conservative Christians. But now isolationism and antisemitism are changing the tone.
n.pr
November 7, 2025 at 2:08 PM
Christian philosemitism and antisemitism were always only separated by an incredibly thin line.
Imagine being the rabbi who agrees to do this: forward.com/fast-forward...
Kanye says he wants to ‘make amends’ with Jews, meets with Orthodox celebrity rabbi
The meeting came months after Ye declared on X that he was “done with antisemitism.”
forward.com
November 7, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Imagine being the rabbi who agrees to do this: forward.com/fast-forward...