Historian Pamela Nadell is very familiar with the rituals of publishing a book, as she has written nine of them: Secure a release date, present at academic conferences, maybe headline a handful of general-public events. Although she is at the forefront of her field at American University — chair in Women’s and Gender History, director of the Jewish studies program and past president of the Association of Jewish Studies — Nadell knows that success in academia does not often translate to strong book sales. 

Things appear to be different for her latest book, Antisemitism: An American Tradition. 

Nadell began to understand how much interest a book on antisemitism would generate when her publisher assigned a full-time publicist to promote the book, which will be published on Oct. 14. Nadell is booked at speaking engagements across the country into 2027, starting with an event at the Washington bookstore Politics and Prose this week. 

The book that she began researching six years ago will now appear on bookshelves at a time when antisemitism has reached record levels since the Anti-Defamation League began tracking data in 1979.

“I had hoped, frankly, that the subject would be seen as a historic subject by the time [the book] came out into the world,” Nadell told Jewish Insider in a recent interview. “And that’s absolutely not the case.” 

Nadell argues in her book that antisemitism is not an aberration in the United States. Instead, she writes, it is intricately woven into the American experience — as American as, say, apple pie. 

Jews came from Europe seeking freedom from religious persecution, and while they escaped the pogroms that had haunted them overseas, they did not arrive in a world magically free from antisemitism. She traced the history of anti-Jewish sentiment in America from colonial days to the present, identifying the aftermath of the Civil War as the moment it really gained a foothold in American society. 

“America is different [from Europe] in that we never had state sponsored violence against American Jews,” Nadell said. “But the roots of anti-Judaism in America start immediately … the roots of anti-Judaism in America rest on traditional Christian ideas about who the Jews are and what they did to Jesus.”

While antisemitism has always been present in America, the tenor and intensity of it has ebbed and flowed. “We’re in a moment,” she said, “where it’s really bad.” 

The reason she is most concerned about the state of antisemitism in America is not just the frequency of antisemitic incidents or the toll of violent attacks on Jews. According to a study published this week by the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish Federations of North America, more than half of American Jews now say antisemitism is a normal part of the Jewish experience. 

It’s that doors are once again closing to Jews in a way that reminds her of the quotas, housing covenants and employment restrictions that were baked into American life until the 1950s and 1960s. 

“The perception that [antisemitism] was over was because of how much American Jews ascended into American life as those structural barriers fell,” Nadell said. “The doors to corporations opened up, the doors to the colleges opened up. But antisemitism — it’s like it was a nagging factor.” 

America is now experiencing another period “where Jewish life once again seems to be constricting,” Nadell argued. “Not in exactly the same ways that it did in those years between World War I and World War II, when there were so many structural limitations. But the closing off of spaces to Jews today is happening once again.” 

She pointed to boycotts of Jewish and Zionist writers in the publishing industry, and antisemitic litmus tests appearing in unexpected places like the mental health profession. 

“Being told that you have to denounce Israel in order to join a student club? Those students are going to carry those memories forward into their future,” said Nadell. 

In recent years, and particularly following the wave of antisemitism that was unleashed after the Oct. 7 attacks two years ago, several Jewish thinkers have posited that the American Jewish community’s best days are behind it. Franklin Foer wrote an Atlantic cover story under the alarming headline, “The Golden Age of American Jews is ending.”

Nadell argues that the notion that there ever was a “golden age” is a myth. “The idea that there was a golden age of Jews in Spain actually emerges during the Dreyfus Affair [in 1894], when things are so terrible in Europe,” she noted. Similarly, Nadell argues that the supposedly now-over golden age for American Jews after the end of quotas and de jure discrimination is not really so straightforward. 

“By the time we get to the late ‘60s and on in the 20th century, American Jews feel really secure. The places that used to be closed to us have now opened, and that’s what leads to the perception of the golden age,” said Nadell. “The problem … is the assumption that antisemitism disappeared, but it didn’t.”

Still, Nadell considers herself an optimist. Antisemitism is part of the American fabric. And while that might be a demoralizing conclusion, she views it the other way: Jews have thrived in this country despite antisemitism, and they will continue to do so. 

“The reality is that it is part of the normative Jewish experience to experience antisemitism,” said Nadell. “But I think ultimately, American Jews will be okay in the United States.”

In a lengthy profile by New Yorker contributor Ian Parker, historian and Israeli public intellectual Yuval Noah Harari speaks out on his theories, his personal life and his predictions for how the world will come to an end. Harari, the author of Sapiens, an international bestseller covering the entirety of world history, serves as a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Core theory: Harari argues that humanity faces existential threats from nuclear war, ecological collapse and technological disruption. In Sapiens he makes the case that, due to technological and scientific advances, “we may be fast approaching a new singularity, when all the concepts that give meaning to our world — me, you, men, women, love and hate — will become irrelevant” and humans may disappear entirely. But Harari stops short of offering concrete proposals to address this, aside from international cooperation and “focus.”

Famous fans: President Barack Obama has recommended Harari’s Sapiens, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has purportedly also read the book. Harari’s husband and manager Itzik Yahav told Parker that Sapiens convinced the prime minister to cut back on his consumption of meat. 

Connections with the rich and powerful: Harari once attended a dinner party at billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s home. The professor and author said he thinks many of the social issues that companies like Facebook cause are bugs, which the companies are trying to correct. Last year, he had a run-in with billionaire investor David Rubenstein at a conference in Ukraine, where Rubenstein gave Harari his business card. 

Pessimistic about Mideast peace: Harari sees no motivation among Israelis to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, saying that — especially with new surveillance technology — the current situation could persist for centuries. He said only “a war, a catastrophe… a couple of thousand people die, something” was likely to break the deadlock.

Read the full profile here.

Historian Michael Oren, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. and Knesset Member in the 20th Knesset, discussed the lesser-known story of the U.S. the Balfour Declaration in a new podcast from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 

Hosted by David Makovsky, the think tank’s Ziegler distinguished fellow and director of the project on Arab-Israel relations, “Decision Points,” a series of ten episodes, is the first podcast focused on the history of the U.S.-Israel relationship since the creation of the Jewish State. It features 30-minute conversations with key scholars and book authors. 

Oren: “[Former President] Woodrow Wilson was — if you read his memoirs, his remarks, those of his wife Edith in particular — sort of what you call a garden-variety antisemite. And yet… he went against the advice of all of his senior counselors, including his Secretary of State Robert Lansing, his personal political adviser Col. Edward House, who were adamantly opposed to Zionism… But it was Wilson’s restorationist worldview, which at this precise moment in history… met up with a peculiar geostrategic situation that [was] obtained in 1917,” pointing to the Communist revolution in Russia and the fear that the Germans would issue a similar declaration. 

Key relationship: The relationship between President Wilson and Louis Dembitz Brandeis, whom he respected when Wilson was governor of New Jersey, was key in persuading the U.S. to throw its support behind Arthur Balfour’s declaration when he visited the U.S. in 1917, Oren explains in detail. “Balfour was convinced that if he can get Wilson to sign on to this idea it will persuade the British government because they so need America in the [first World] War and he’s not getting anywhere with Wilson’s advisors. He needs to actually get into the Oval Office, he’s not getting there. He turns to Brandeis… Brandeis says to Balfour, ‘Don’t worry, I got it.’ He goes into the Oval Office, has maybe a half-an-hour meeting and walks out with Wilson’s approval of what would later become the Balfour Declaration. A pivotal moment in Middle Eastern history, Jewish history, and Israel history certainly, that short meeting between Brandeis and Wilson.” 

The audience: Makovsky tells Jewish Insider that people are now consuming information differently than in the past — the number of podcast listeners has increased sharply in 2019, according to a recent survey — “and I think it’s very important for those of us who care about U.S.-Israel relations to basically meet people where they are through new media. The idea of interviewing authors who have written about different periods of the U.S.-Israel relationship is that by the end of ten episodes, people will feel they have a better grasp of the trajectory, the arc of history when it comes to this relationship.”

Essential alliance: Talking about the Balfour Declaration, Makovsky said those events are a reminder of the idea of alliances: “We are at a time where people are saying that we could withdraw from the Middle East. We don’t really need allies. But you know, we saw this with al-Baghdadi too, that it ultimately takes a village, so to speak, of allies that made the capture possible. Zionism always believed in two ideas and did not see it as a contradiction. It believed in the idea of self-reliance, but also making sure that you have very good ties with the leading countries of the time, which [in 1917] are Britain and the United States. I think that was the key to Zionism’s success. And I think that is also good advice for the United States today that we need allies. We need the multipliers and having allies are critical or American influence in the Middle East and beyond.”