David Bernstein is the Founder of Jewish Institute for Liberal Values (JILV). Follow him on Twitter @DavidLBernstein.
David Bernstein
By David Bernstein
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Opinion What counts as racism? How the ADL’s ‘woke’ definition caused an uproar — and should be a cautionary tale
It recently came to light that the ADL — the vaunted anti-extremism and civil rights organization — had released a controversial definition of racism a few years ago. Public awareness of ADL’s new definition happened to coincide with Whoopi Goldberg’s ill-chosen words that the Holocaust “is not about race, but about man’s inhumanity,” and unsurprisingly…
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Opinion This new social justice theory is making academia dangerous for Jews
This June, two Jewish mental health providers at Stanford University alleged they were the targets of anti-Jewish harassment. Ron Albucher, a prominent psychiatrist and Sheila Levin, a clinical social worker, have filed a legal complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on June 15. The complaint alleges that Stanford University’s Counseling & Psychological Services’ Diversity,…
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Opinion We Have To Congratulate Trump. He’s Too Important To Be Treyf to Us.
It was 1:30am on election night and it was clear that Donald Trump was on the threshold of a stunning electoral victory. This was not the night I had been expecting. I plugged in my laptop, took a deep breath, and wrote the first words that came to mind: the “Jewish Council for Public Affairs…congratulates…
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Opinion You Hate the Jewish Establishment — But Do You Know What It Is?
I recently found myself in a small conference room with a number of key figures of the “American Jewish establishment.” Around the table was the chief executive of one of the major Jewish defense organizations, several high-level Federation representatives, and leaders of mainstream Israel advocacy organizations. We were not conducting a secretive strategy meeting on…
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Opinion BDS and the Rising Danger of ‘Intersectionality’
(JTA) — If you want to understand why the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, or BDS, has gained so much ground in the past two years, look no further than intersectionality, the study of related systems of oppression. Intersectionality holds that various forms of oppression — racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and homophobia — constitute an…
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Opinion Ignoring Anti-Semitism Is Sometimes Best
Nearly 100 years ago, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously coined the phrase “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants” in praise of transparency and honesty in public policy. Not long after, Jewish communal organizations (within which Brandeis was an active supporter of the Zionist cause) appropriated the phrase for their own purposes,…
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News Affirming Our Identity, Staking Our Claim
A few years ago I met with an Episcopal bishop to discuss his church?s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mainline Protestant denominations at the time were flirting with selective divestment from companies doing business with Israel. This bishop, in particular, was not known for his Zionist sympathies. He was highly disturbed that Palestinian farmers were…
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