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Gil Troy

Gil Troy

Professor Gil Troy is an American presidential historian, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and the author, most recently, of “The Essential Guide to Zionism, Anti-Zionism, AntiSemitism and Jew-Hatred.”

The founding father of Zionism taught his people “the darkness must retreat.”
America’s small Jewish community endures nearly two-thirds of all anti-religious hate crimes annually.
Early on, when he was still trying to fit in, there were clear signs that the Theodor Herzl that always was—was the Theodor Herzl he eventually became.
In Herzl’s household—like so many other bourgeois Jewish homes—the success in looking normal on the streets came at a high Jewish cost, even at home.
Theodor Herzl remains the one essential Zionist leader 118 years after his death and 125 years after he convened the First Zionist Congress.
In 1934, Berl Katznelson, an avowedly secular socialist Zionist living in Tel Aviv, criticized members of his youth movement for going off to camp on Tisha B’Av.
Viewing race or gender or any identity dimension too rigidly reflects a more worrisome trend of treating politics as a game of absolutes—be it from the left or the right.
As America becomes impasse-ville, many influential voices have imposed a false all-or-nothing historical choice on us.