Psychiatrist-historian-Harvard professor Kenneth Levin’s The Canary on the Couch delves deeply into why so many of us American Jews, both organizational leaders and common folks, respond counter-productively to the rising antizionism and antisemitism we presently face. This isn’t new he shows by reviewing Diaspora Jews’ responses to persecutions of us in the past. In his final chapter he lays out what both organizations and we grassroots must do.
This is a grim collection of essays by Jonathan Tobin, Caroline Glick, Morton Klein, Alan Dershowitz and others detailing failures in different contexts of the leadership of important American Jewish organizations in countering anti-Israel and anti-Jewish actions we face. The editors’ call is for us American Jews to seek and secure stronger organizational leadership.
In chapter 9 of my book, “Gone Astray,” I list over a dozen recent statements and actions by American Jewish groups counter-productive to Israelis’ and our own rights and security. The entirety of my book, written one grassroots U.S. Jew to others, aims at arming us to make our peoplehood and homeland case to fellow Americans more confidently and effectively by understanding more fully our homeland history and the falsity of widespread myths and canards.
