A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities

A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities

Thursday at 12:00PM PDT

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In Emily Tamkin’s book, Bad Jews examines the last 100 years of American Jewish politics, culture, identities, and arguments. Drawing on over 150 interviews, she tracks the evolution of Jewishness throughout American history, and explores many of the evolving and conflicting Jewish positions on assimilation, race, Zionism and Israel, affluence, and poverty, philanthropy, finance, politics, and social justice. From this complex and nuanced history, Tamkin and her interviewer Jonathan Dobrer will help us pinpoint the one truth about American Jewish identity: It is always changing. Buy the book HERE.

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Emily Tamkin is a writer and reporter. Her work has appeared in The Columbia Journalism Review, The Economist, The New Republic, Politico, Slate, and The Washington Post, among other publications. She previously covered foreign affairs on staff at Foreign Policy and BuzzFeed News. She studied Russian literature and culture at Columbia University and Russian and East European studies at the University of Oxford. She researched Soviet dissidence in Moscow, Russia; Tbilisi, Georgia, and, on a Fulbright grant, in Bremen, Germany. She lives in Washington, D.C.

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Jonathan Dobrer teaches Current Events at American Jewish University and has taught at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He is a graduate of USC and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He studied philosophy in Vienna and spent two years in the Peace Corps in Tunisia. Jonathan also specializes in Comparative Religion, specifically, how Christianity developed from Hebrew scriptures, stories and archetypes; and how Islam grew from both Judaism and primitive Christianity.

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