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Jack Nusan Porter’s writings date back to 1966, during the height of the Vietnam War. He describes the anguished struggle against war, racism, and poverty, as well as the radical groups and individuals involved—Jewish socialists, radical Zionists, radical Jews, Rabbi Meir Kahane and the Jewish Defense League, the counterculture, liberals, and conservatives alike. In addition, his writings vividly recount the anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and revolutionary terrorism of the times. Here, Porter draws from the past in an effort to explain the present, walking the precarious bridge between allegiance to Israel and the Jewish people and the universal rights of all people. This collection of older and newer essays combines theory, sociology, film studies, literary criticism, post-modern thought, and politics.
Jack Nusan Porter founded the Jewish Student Movement in the 1960s and was editor of the classic movement anthology Jewish Radicalism. He is currently an associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University and a former associate of Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute. His run for US Congress in the 12th District of Massachusetts was the subject of a profile in an April 2012 issue of “Talk of the Town” in The New Yorker. In 2015, he was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in the prediction and eradication of genocide.
Table of Contents
Preface by Shaul Magid
Introduction: The Roots of Jewish Radicalism
I. Early Writings
1. The Negro, the New Left, and the Hippy
2. The New Left, The Black Man, and Israel
3. Zionism, Racism, and the United Nations: Toward the Prostitution of Language
4. Zionism: Liberation Movement of the Jewish People (by Yosef Tekoah)
5. Zionism is Not Racism (by Morris U. Schappes)
6. Talking Police Blues
7. Student Protest and the Technocratic Society: The Case of ROTC
II. Jewish Radicals: Theory
8. The Jewish Rebel
9. The Jewishness of Karl Marx
10. Self-Hatred and Self-Esteem
11. Can a Sociologist be a Revolutionist?
III. Jewish Radicals: History
12. Morris U. Schappes: Jewish Radical Historian—An Interview
13. Martin Buber and the American Jewish Counterculture (with Yizhak Ahren)
IV. Jewish Radicals: Praxis/Action
14. Jewish Student Activism
15. The Origins of the Jewish Student Movement: A Personal Reflection
16. The Press of Freedom: To Uncle Tom and Other Such Jews (by M. Jay Rosenberg)
V. Jewish Radicals on the Right: Meir Kahane and the JDL
17. Jewish Conservative Backlash
18. My Secret Days and Nights in the Jewish Defense League
19. Letters: Kahane in New York
VI. Neo-Nazism and Neo-Fascism
20. Neo-Nazism, Neo-Fascism, and Terrorism: A Global Trend?
21. A Nazi Runs for Mayor: Dangerous Brownshirts or Media Freaks?
22. Neo-Nazis in the USA: An Interview (by Art Jahnke)
VII. Radical Zionism
23. My Days and Nights in Habonim
24. Israel Needs a Social, Political, and Peaceful Revolution
25. The End of Zionism?
VIII. Radical Poetry and Prose
26. The Ten Commandments of the Holocaust
27. The Radical Poetry of Jack Nusan Porter: Introduction
Mystic—Dedicated to Shlomo Carlebach
The Children
Ode to Amerika: Observations on the “Chicago 7” Trial, 1969-1970
What is a Jewish Radical?
The Jewish Poet
IX. Radical Cinema and Media
28. Revolution and Rebellion in Film
29. Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten: Their Legacy
30. The Jew as Bourgeois
31. David Mamet’s Homicide: A Re-evaluation
32. Is Hollywood Leftist and Anti-Frum (Orthodox)? A Response to Screenwriter Robert J. Avrech
X. New Directions for Israel
33. Ten Days on the West Bank: A New Year’s Hope for Peace
34. The Future of Israel
XI. New Directions in Presidential Politics
35. The 2016 American Presidential Race: Where Do the Frontrunners Stand on Foreign Policy Issues?
36. The Hidden Power of Donald and Bernie
37. When Politics Meets History
XII. The Future of Jewish Radicalism
38. The Impact of Jewish Radicalism
39. Jewish Radicalism: A Classic Revisited 50 Years Later
40. Building a Jewish Radical Movement
Conclusion: Toward a Post-Modern Radical Jewish Community
Bibliography
About the Author