Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

Benjamin Kerstein

Benjamin Kerstein is a writer, editor and novelist, and a fellow at the Z3 Institute. His latest work is Self Defense: A Jewish Manifesto (2025).

To demolish the secular Jewish tradition would leave us all diminished.
The “as-a-Jew” activists who loathe Zionism and Israel are heirs to a dark and destructive legacy.
The only losers, once again, will be the Israeli people.
American Jews’ reaction to a BDS map of Massachusetts Jewish sites shows that they have forsaken the only real concern: The empowerment of the Jewish people.
I want the perpetrator punished to the fullest extent of the law, but my family does not feel the same urgency. A divide has opened between us.
A two-round system adopted by referendum could end the absurd political farce in which we now find ourselves.
The “Nakba” resolution is only the next step in the quest to institutionalize anti-Semitism in American politics.
Israel is dedicated to two principles—Judaism and democracy—that cannot be judged by a universal standard; yet this may be its greatest strength.
The newspaper and its staff support BDS because Zionism has always been a movement of unprivileged Jews, and thus cannot be tolerated.
It seems clear that the president is effectively making Israel—and indeed, all Jews—a moral issue in the United States, which they have never been before. He is turning philo- and anti-Semitism, Zionism and anti-Zionism into questions of patriotism and loyalty.