Norman Podhoretz, the pugnacious editor and neoconservative pioneer who died on Tuesday at the age of 95, charted a protean trajectory through American politics and intellectual discourse, rising to prominence as a leading champion of a muscular foreign policy vision conjoined with a fierce support for Israel that influenced such presidents as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Despite his early political conversion from staunch liberal to conservative trailblazer, Podhoretz — the always-ambitious son of a Yiddish-speaking milkman from Eastern Europe who was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn — remained consistent in his commitment to defending Israel as well as promoting the Jewish ideals that guided his social and professional ascent.

During his 35-year tenure helming Commentary— from 1960 to 1995 — he established the periodical as a lightning rod of disputatious ideas that helped drive the conservative movement, while at the same time building his reputation as an estimable thinker in Jewish American debate of the mid-20th century. 

Under his editorial stewardship, Podhoretz transformed the magazine — then published by the American Jewish Committee — into a pro-Israel force that significantly shaped American foreign policy in the Middle East while helping steer the GOP to a more instinctive embrace of the Jewish state as a key ally.

“The neoconservatives played a pivotal role in providing the intellectual firepower for the case for Israel,” Jacob Heilbrunn, the author of a book about the movement Podhoretz founded, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, told Jewish Insider in an interview on Wednesday. “They did that not only by arguing that Israel was a vital outpost in opposing the spread of communism in the Middle East, but also in forging and defending the rise of the evangelicals who supported Israel.”

Absent Podhoretz and his ideological comrades including Irving Kristol, another neoconservative leader, “I don’t think that you would have had the intellectual justification for defending Israel inside the GOP,” Heilbrunn said, noting that the party had previously been “hostile to Israel.”

Podhoretz, who wrote a dozen books including his score-settling debut memoir, Making It, published in 1967, was an erstwhile liberal who abandoned the left-wing New York intellectual milieu that nurtured his rise and turned to neoconservatism in the 1960s, after growing disillusioned with a counterculture he viewed as increasingly hostile to Israel following the Six Day War.

“Podhoretz was the founder of neoconservatism,” Joshua Muravchik, an author and like-minded foreign policy expert, told JI, noting that the “role is sometimes ascribed to Irving Kristol. In truth, there were two strands.”

Kristol, he argued, “led a group of thinkers who reckoned with the limits of social engineering and the welfare state” — while Podhoretz “led a deeper project, the rediscovery or reassertion of the moral greatness of America, of democracy and of Western civilization.”

“This made him not only a great American patriot but a great Jewish patriot,” he said, “because Israel is a precious, against-all-odds outpost of Western civilization and because the roots of American civic culture and Western civilization are found in the Hebrew bible.”

In publishing major articles by the likes of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick as well as Norman Mailer and Philip Roth, Podhoretz “set a high standard for Jewish intellectual periodicals” while also playing “a role in opening up the Jewish community to more conservative views that had not previously been admitted,” said Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University.

“Even those who didn’t agree with him I think respected his standard,” Sarna, who published his first article in Commentary in his mid-20s, told JI in an interview. “I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels indebted to Norman.”

Mark Gerson, an author and businessman who interviewed Podhoretz while working on his 1997 book, The Neoconservative Vision, called the late editor “a towering intellectual” and a “great man of ideas who made Commentary, when he took it over, one of the best magazines or publications ever.”

“It was always interesting, always intellectually serious, always rigorous, always challenging,” he said. Podhoretz, who was otherwise recognized as an astute if often acid-penned literary critic, “had a unique ability to come up with the most interesting ideas, to tell the most visceral truths and to recruit some people who became defining the writers of his generation,” Gerson told JI.

The magazine is now edited by Podhoretz’s son, John, who wrote in a tribute on Tuesday that his father’s “knowledge extended beyond literature to Jewish history, Jewish thinking, Jewish faith, and the Hebrew Bible.”

“Norman believed that words matter, and arguments matter, and his leadership of Commentary was a 30-year effort at putting forward the best arguments in defense of America, Israel, the West and the Jews,” said Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Podhoretz’s stepson-in-law. “He looked for the best writers and champions of this cause, from Moynihan and Kirkpatrick to dozens of young voices, and he engaged them in this noble cause.”

“There was no magic formula beyond logic, language and unwavering moral commitment,” Abrams told JI. 

Podhoretz, of course, had many critics on the left and right — including among some former writers. Robert Alter, the renowned biblical translator who frequently contributed to Commentary, said he had “mixed thoughts about Norman.”

“Early in his career, he was admirable in attracting promising young writers,” he told JI on Wednesday. “His staunch defense of Israel, as the American left moved toward anti-Israel positions after 1967, was politically valuable.”

But while Podhoretz had “made Commentary the central journal in American intellectual life” during the 1960s, his politics had, by the end of the decade, “hardened into a rather rigid neoconservatism,” he added. “The eventual result was that Commentary became a kind of sectarian publication with a much smaller readership.”

In recent years, the movement Podhoretz led has also faced backlash from isolationist and America First conservatives who have pejoratively invoked the term “neoconservative” as representative of the sort of hawkish interventionism that helped lead the U.S. into war in Iraq and other quagmires across the Middle East.

Though his movement was usurped by President Donald Trump, Podhoretz — unlike other fellow neoconservatives — backed his campaign in 2016, citing concerns about Hillary Clinton’s support for the Iran nuclear agreement which he viewed as disastrous. In a characteristically cutting explanation, Podhoretz said at the time that he skeptically viewed Trump as “Pat Buchanan without the antisemitism,” underscoring the extent to which his attachment to Israel fueled his political thinking.

But even as the ideals that Podhoretz had long championed have largely “been steamrollered now by Trump,” said Heilbrunn, the scrappy editor and public intellectual “will be there in the conservative pantheon” and “played a key role in reshaping the Republican Party.”

“And who knows, neoconservatism is a protean movement,” Heilbrunn speculated. “It can always make a comeback.”

New Jersey’s largest teachers’ union, the New Jersey Education Association, cut ties with an editor of its magazine on Friday, following criticism from top state officials over her antisemitic and pro-Hamas posts on social media.

Ayat Oraby’s since-deleted posts on X, screenshots of which were viewed by JI, claimed Israel “killed many of its citizens” during the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attacks and voiced her support of Hamas, praising its actions on social media as “resistance,” among other views.  

Oraby, who started at the NJEA Review magazine in August, told the New Jersey Globe, the first outlet to report her termination, that her “intent has always been humanitarian: to stand against the killing of civilians and to advocate for peace. When compassion is politicized, even empathy can be misread.” 

Local Jewish elected officials voiced worry about Oraby’s appointment in October, sending a letter to NJEA with 24 signees, expressing “deep concern.” 

“We are disappointed that no corrective action has yet been taken despite clear evidence and mounting public concern. Words matter and silence in the face of hate speech is complicity,” the signatories wrote. “We strongly urge you to act immediately to remove Ms. Oraby from any editorial or leadership role within the NJEA and to reaffirm the Association’s commitment to ensuring that all educators, students, and families regardless of religion or background can feel safe, respected, and represented.”

The letter followed one sent by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) to the NJEA, also voicing concern.  

“Ms. Oraby has an extremely troubling public record of promoting divisive, violent, and hate-filled rhetoric that has no place in our great state, and that must be addressed immediately,” Gottheimer wrote on Oct. 6. “It is clear that Ms. Oraby should not be involved in any publication sent to New Jersey’s educators or, for that matter, have any role in educating our teachers or children.”

Oraby told the New Jersey Globe that Gottheimer was unfair to condemn her for a post she deleted that compared Israel to Nazi Germany, a claim she said “reflects public opinion and legitimate criticism, not hatred.”

Gottheimer also denounced NJEA earlier this month over its plans for an anti-Israel “Teaching Palestine” session scheduled during the union’s November conference. 

NJEA’s parent organization, the National Education Association, has also faced scrutiny for anti-Israel and antisemitic actions, including a vote, which was eventually overturned, to disassociate from the Anti-Defamation League. 

The editor-in-chief of Qatar’s pro-government newspaper Al Sharq called on Hamas “heroes” to kidnap more IDF soldiers in a since-deleted tweet. 

“If success is not achieved this time in capturing Zionist soldiers at the hands of the heroes of #AlQassamBrigades, then the second, third, and fourth attempts will succeed, God willing, by adding new rats to the tally held by the heroes of the Brigades,” Qatari journalist Jabar Al-Harmi wrote in Arabic last week, adding that the “heroes” of Al-Qasam “sent a number of Zionist soldiers to hell” by storming an IDF military site in southern Gaza. Those that weren’t killed were “sent to worldly torment with permanent disabilities and impairments, and others to mental and psychological institutions.” 

Al-Harmi continued, “Blessed be the hands of the heroes. And may the hands of the vile criminal outcasts be paralyzed.” 

Al Sharq, which is published in Doha by a privately held media company founded and owned by Sheikh Khalid bin Thani Al Thani, a member of the Qatari ruling family, is one of the four leading private daily Arabic newspapers in Qatar, all of which have a pro-government bent. 

Ghaith Al-Omari, a senior fellow in The Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Irwin Levy Family Program in the U.S.-Israel Strategic Relationship, told Jewish Insider that the tweet is “not surprising” and comes amid widespread praise for Hamas in Qatari media. 

“The Qatari media landscape is rife with statements, selective reporting and editorials that support Hamas,” said Al-Omari, former executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine. “Under the guise of supporting the Palestinian people, many Qatari media outlets have been a key vehicle for amplifying Hamas propaganda.” 

Jewish Insider editor-in-chief Josh Kraushaar sat down with Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt to talk about the rise of antisemitism and how to most effectively combat it, his recent conversation with Elon Musk and his thoughts on whether DEI programs are systemically antisemitic.

Here are two clips from today’s conversation:

JI Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar sat down with political commentator David Frum. David Frum is a staff writer for The Atlantic and author of ten books.

Click below to watch the entire interview from JI’s new Inside the Newsroom interview series.

JI Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar sat down with Ruy Teixeira, a American Enterprise Institute senior fellow, delving into topics such as the upcoming 2024 presidential election, the internal divisions within the Democratic Party, and recent developments surrounding Israel. The discussion also touched upon broader political implications for the future. He is also the author of new book (with John Judis): Where Have All the Democrats Gone?: The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes.

Click below to watch the entire interview from JI’s new Inside the Newsroom interview series.

New York Times editor Bari Weiss was gearing up to write a book about censorship and the policing of free speech in the 21st century. Then a gunman opened fire at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018, killing 11 Jewish worshippers. 

Weiss, a native of Pittsburgh, had celebrated her bat mitzvah at the Tree of Life synagogue. The scourge of deadly antisemitic violence had hit closer to home than she ever thought possible. And that attack and its aftermath made it clear to Weiss that the book she really needed to be writing in this moment was How to Fight Anti-Semitism, which will be published tomorrow.  

“Antisemitism is something that I had been following closely my whole life,” Weiss told Jewish Insider in a recent interview. “But it had sort of remained mostly something that was happening to other people in other places.” 

The deadly shooting changed that view, and deeply affected Weiss. She opens her book in a very personal way, detailing her reactions and experiences in Pittsburgh in the days after the attack. It is hard not to hear despair, anger and fear in her opening words, after not just one but two deadly synagogue shootings in the span of six months. 

“It was clear after the Poway attack [in April] that Jews — never mind everyone else living in a divided nation awash in weapons owned by people who could radicalize themselves in front of computer screens — had reason to be afraid in America,” Weiss wrote. 

But by the book’s conclusion, Weiss sounds a much more optimistic note, championing a defiant, joyous Judaism that refuses to back down, and an unapologetic love for the State of Israel, flaws and all. The book’s final chapter exhorts Jews to “practice a Judaism of affirmation, not a Judaism of defensiveness” as a way to combat the dark forces of antisemitism, and to not being afraid to call out antisemitic sentiments from any part of the spectrum. 

“My intent with the book was always for it to have a really energizing, positive message for people,” she said. “I think Jewish history teaches us nothing other than that.” And in the book’s opening, she said, “I really tried hard to take myself back to that morning [after the Pittsburgh shooting], and tried to help the reader go there with me.”

In just 200 pages, Weiss lays out a brief history of anti-Jewish bigotry, her classification of the three categories of antisemitism — from the right, the left and radical Islam — and her proposals for how Jews around the world can fight the ancient hatred. 

While Weiss had always known about and studied antisemitism around the world, she was shocked when it reared its ugly head in the United States. Could Jews in the U.S. one day contemplate emigrating — the way many French and British Jews have in recent years? 

“I wouldn’t have written this book if I didn’t think that was in some ways a possibility,” she told JI. “Does it worry me right now that if you are a man walking around Crown Heights with a kippa and tzitzit out, that you might be physically assaulted? That to me is a pretty wild state of affairs, and one that has been largely overlooked in the past.” 

The New York Times columnist pulls no punches in calling out the insidious antisemitism on both the right and the left of the political spectrum, including that emanating from the White House. 

“In the nearly three years he has been in office, Donald Trump has trashed — gleefully and shamelessly — the unwritten rules of our society that have kept American Jews and, therefore, America safe,” she writes. “He has, at every opportunity, turned the temperature up rather than down. And he has genuinely appeared to have relished his role as the fomenter of chaos and conflict.” 

But Weiss still opines in her book that “anti-Semitism that originates on the political left is more insidious and perhaps more existentially dangerous… calling out politicians like Steve King is easy. Calling out Ilhan Omar is not. That is because Omar is herself targeted by racists and lunatics who wish her harm because of her faith, her gender, or the color of her skin.” She makes it clear that “two things can be true at once: Ilhan Omar can espouse bigoted ideas. And Ilhan Omar can herself be the hate object of bigots, including the president of the United States.”

While Weiss doesn’t believe she is entirely alone in calling out antisemitism across the political spectrum, she said it can be disheartening to watch people let one or the other slide. 

“There are lots of people who are loath to look at the ugliness on their own side,” she told JI. “The reality is that 75% of Jewish Americans vote for Democrats. We live in blue states… what does it mean when the place we thought was our natural home starts to look less and less hospitable?”

Weiss has penned a book that is both personal and academic, and one that she hopes will appeal to Jews and non-Jews alike. 

“I want people to have the sense that they’re listening into the conversations that our community has around our Shabbat dinner table,” she said. While she notes the core appeal of the book is to the Jewish community, “I think that anyone who knows anything about history understands that a society where antisemitism thrives is a society that is dead or dying. And there are lots of signs that America in its current state is in a sort of spiraling period.”