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Abe Silberstein

@abesilbe.bsky.social
736 followers 198 following 303 posts

Writer, Ph.D. student in History and Jewish Studies at New York University. Interested in modern political history, labor, migration, diaspora, and religion.

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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 4h
Jonathan making it clear that he won't take yes for an answer until Mayor Mamdani cries uncle on Israel/Palestine and now his DSA membership. Thank goodness the Nexus Project exists or else there would be no Jewish community organization dedicated to countering antisemitism.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 23h
Really happy to see this coalition of liberal Jewish groups coming together, from JCPA to J Street to JFREJ.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
When I was a liberal Zionist, I would have considered this an outrage and a scandal. Today, I can't but welcome news that Israel itself is clarifying that it is not a state of all the world's Jews.
haaretz.com
Israel freezes aliyah for two Jews over activism protecting Palestinians
In both cases, the protective-presence activists, who did not know each other, had their passports photographed by a soldier or settler. These are the first known cases in which Israeli authorities ap...
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
If you're coming to AJS this year, stop by my panel on December 22 at 10:30 AM.(Will repost in December as well.)
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Netanyahu's seemingly alienating English-language speeches make more sense if you understand that he has basically written off the Democratic Party. The goal is to extract as much as possible out of Republican administrations while the white boomer+ demographic holds sway there.
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Brad Lander @bradlander.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
War criminals are not welcome in New York City. I stood alongside a diverse set of Jewish New Yorkers and allies — at several protests today organized by @jvp.bsky.social, by @truahrabbis.bsky.social & @jstreetdotorg.bsky.social, and by Israelis for Peace.
Standing with a large group of demonstrators to protest Netanyahu
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Let this be the last year of Benjamin Netanyahu's embarrassing "leader of the Jewish people" farce at the UN, and the first of 8 years of Zohran Mamdani overseeing the city during General Assembly weekend.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
A more positive assessment of Benjamin Moser's "Anti-Zionism" by Shaul Magid.
lareviewofbooks.org
Snow Globe Palimpsest | Los Angeles Review of Books
Benjamin Moser delivers biographical sketches of Jews who refused to abandon the Diaspora.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Gilbert Achcar on why, contra the legacy of Walt and Mearsheimer, the Iran War is the responsibility of Trump and US imperialism.
jacobin.com
Reasons of Empire
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt blamed Israel for America’s Middle Eastern fiascos. But from Iraq to Iran, Washington has had its own reasons for war in the Gulf.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Broadly speaking, among liberals and progressives, it looks like we are finally beyond the notion that education reforms of any kind can transform neoliberalism into a fairer or more just economic paradigm. That is one dead-end thankfully foreclosed.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
The typical private school in the US is a very mediocre parochial school that doesn't necessarily compare favorably on academics to local public alternatives?
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Herzog is part of the rot. Always has been.
haaretz.com
Herzog pardons IDF soldier convicted of killing wounded Palestinian assailant
The IDF has previously objected to pardoning Azaria, citing his lack of remorse over his actions. Defense Minister Katz, who requested the pardon, said it sent a message that 'we do not leave our sold...
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This is true but the DC foreign policy establishment is contemptuous of academic scholars of international relations, mainstream or not. It is basically part of the professional socialization process. Few in the blob bother with Kenneth Waltz after they graduate from SIPA, SAIS, HKS, Fletcher, etc.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
2018 "Mueller Time" vibes. This is not happening.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
It appears from this review that Benjamin Moser's long-awaited book on anti-Zionism is a major disappointment, laden with errors of fact and citational judgment.
newyorker.com
Is Zionism’s Moral Crisis About Roads Not Taken—or Original Sin?
Where Benjamin Moser replaces one story of Jewish exceptionalism with another, Omer Bartov shows what’s lost when polemic takes the place of history.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I’ve always admired the scholarship and leadership of David Myers. But I don’t think I ever expected him to write something quite like this. “The path to rebuilding a sustainable, morally tenable Judaism for the future will be paved by the embrace of Palestinian liberation as a moral necessity.”
shaulmagid.substack.com
Guest Essay: David Myers - “Shevirat Ha-Kelim (Rupture) and Tikun: (Fixing)”
Toward a New Paradigm of Jewish Identity
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
In the long-running saga of "Are white Jews really white?", eligibility for refugee status according to the Trump administration would be quite the weight on the scale.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Journal article I submitted in June is "Under Review" with no indication of whether this means the editorial desk or blind reviewers. Email I wrote two weeks ago via the submission portal—does that function even work?—has not been acknowledged. Best case scenario post-PhD is decades of this.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Christian Zionist supersessionism at its most naked.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Aaron Jakes, via a review of Angela Buchdahl's memoir, on US Reform Judaism failing to meet the moment.
nplusonemag.com
The Right Reform Rabbi | Aaron Jakes
When Buchdahl professes that she can understand “how even white men in America are feeling,” she unwittingly reveals a structuring affinity between the politics of white reaction and her own anti-anti...
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
How do people on the receiving end of this "allyship" not find it incredibly weird and off-putting? I would be totally mortified if my mainline Protestant political allies (for example) started lecturing right-wing Jews about Tikkun Olam or whatnot.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
It's not online yet, but the Fall issue of n+1 includes a devastating takedown by Aaron Jakes of Angela Buchdahl's memoir and career. Look out for it.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I renewed my AHA membership on the advice of friends and colleagues who are leading the good fight from within. I'm not sure for how long I will continue to do this, though.
chronicle.com
Opinion | A Scholarly Association’s Secretive Washington Playbook
Did the American Historical Association ask a corporate lobbying firm for advice on how to silence its members?
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I was very proud to vote for Shawn Fain and the United UAW list in the international officers election. Shawn has been a tremendously effective and principled progressive leader on the national stage. If you are a member, please remember to send in your ballot.
jacobin.com
The United Auto Workers Are Voting for Their Top Leadership
United Auto Workers members are now voting by mail ballot for their top officers. The election will decide whether President Shawn Fain, who led 2023’s stand-up strike against the Big Three automakers...
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I can’t believe I’m about to enter year three of my PhD program and that I just finished my prospectus workshop. Time flies when you’re having fun, and in my case gaining a dozen new close friends through my cohort. No conflicts or beefs, only love and support. Literally zero complaints or regrets.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Hamid Dabashi writes, "You are either on the side of the genocidal mass-murdering bombers, or on the side of those being bombed." Yes, and the Guardian letter made very clear the signatories were on the side of Iranians being bombed, not the US and Israel. No ambiguity there.
middleeasteye.net
War on Iran: Left-wing luminaries behind Guardian letter have lost the plot
By equating the bombers with the bombed, the appeal signed by Angela Davis and Judith Butler lends moral cover to western imperialism - and its backers are already deserting it
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Hal Foster: "My wager is that ‘the people’ may have now become a force of the anti-commons, of enclosure, in whose name detention camps and data centres are being built. Hence my vote for a temporary moratorium on the word, and a search for its utopian antithesis."
tribunemag.co.uk
Abolish the People
Socialist politics in the 2020s is a search for the commons, whose utopian energies are buried in our lost histories and lurking in the ruins of our present.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
As Jerald Podair shows, the 1968 Ocean-Hill Brownsville strike consolidated the white middle class in the outerboroughs as a conservative voting bloc. They remained Democrats for a while (after all, the reviled John Lindsay was a Republican) but they were the force behind Rudy Guiliani's narrow win.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Horrible. I cross this exact street almost every day. There is really no such thing as a green light for pedestrians anymore.
amny.com
Hit-and-run kills woman in Manhattan’s West Village
A young woman was killed in the West Village early Sunday morning when a driver struck her and fled the scene in a hit-and-run.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
I’m told my short essay on DSA’s history is in today’s print edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
share.inquirer.com
Democratic socialism has been rising in the U.S. for over 50 years
A number of DSA-endorsed candidates are winning Democratic primaries, building on a strategy from the 1970s.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
This letter is from March when Cofnas was initially awarded the postdoc. The giveaway is their praise for De Sutter, who had defended the appointment at the time but has since changed her tune. The current petition defending Cofnas doesn’t have as many “big names” on it.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
The corrupt leadership of the Brooklyn Democratic Party is trying to change the rules on how the chair of the party is chosen before new reformist District Leaders—who were just elected by Democratic voters from across Brooklyn—take office. This should be a national story/disgrace.
nysfocus.com
Facing Ouster, Brooklyn Democratic Chair Tries to Rewrite Rules
Brooklyn Democratic Party chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn wants to expand who votes for party leader, and a reform group is threatening to sue.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
"What is mostly happening is that students, faculty, and staff are not being disciplined because they are antisemites — they are being designated antisemites so they can be disciplined."
againstthecurrent.org
The Paranoid Style in Pro-Israel Polemics
Jewish Voice for Peace protest at Joe Biden’s State of the Union Speech, March 2024. “To be a Jew means always being with the oppressed and never the oppressors.” —Jewish Labor Bund leader Ma…
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
"Your struggle is as global as our collective dreams of freedom and dignity. We stand with you, and we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism."
theguardian.com
An open letter to Iran’s political prisoners, trapped ‘between two blades of a scissors’
On one side, you face the domination of the Islamic Republic; on the other, the imperialist forces that republic claims to stand against
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
The Psychology faculty at CSU Long Beach did the lord's work for how many decades to ensure Kevin MacDonald would both not be turned into a free speech martyr nor be able to discriminate against students. Ditto for Arthur Butz's poor colleagues at Northwestern (he still hasn't retired!).
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Someone like Nathan Cofnas is extremely unlikely to receive a full-time appointment in any reputable academic department. It is possible he secures a postdoc here or there controlled by a sympathetic faculty member, but I am not sure that represents a dire crisis for the university.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
There is no justification of the marketplace of ideas. This is what WSJ Opinion has always believed.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Scroll to the middle for some positively unhinged quotes from an interview with the JFNA head Eric Fingerhut.
jewishcurrents.org
From the News Desk: The Next Fight for Pro-Palestine Organizers?…
Breaking news, analysis, art, and culture from a progressive Jewish perspective. Sign up for our newsletter!
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
"The bombastic hiring, research, and teaching incentives, both spiritual and institutional, of D.E.I. initiatives are child’s play compared with the corporate and financial inducements that direct universities’ decisions."
newyorker.com
The Real Meaning of the Jason Arday Scandal
In a young Black professor’s academic misconduct, a “race-realist” found a “hook for a story.”
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
I violated my moratorium on additional subscriptions to add the venerable Tribune Magazine, now under the editorship of Oliver Eagleton and Barnaby Raine. A must-read if you're interested at all in the British and European Left.
tribunemag.co.uk
Tribune
Tribune is Britain’s oldest democratic socialist publication, offering leftwing perspectives on politics, economics, and culture.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
And when it is reported, it will be credited entirely to Jessica Tisch.
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Reposted by Abe Silberstein
S.J. Pearce @homophonous.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Academic friends: I emailed local folks this morning about a graduate student teaching gig, but this is also a possibility for students from farther-afield universities if they happen to be physically located in New York this fall. Details below.
One of the TAs for my Islamic Spain lecture course was reassigned to teach a Spanish language class, so I'm looking for a replacement TA, ideally someone in comparative, Spanish, Arabic, or Hebrew literature;
Islamic or Jewish studies; medieval studies; or history. Because this is part of the core curriculum rather than a departmental course, we're able to hire students in NYU programs or from outside NYU as adjuncts as long as they can be physically present in New York for the class meetings. The lecture component of the course meets on Tuesday and Thursday from 11-12:15 and the TA will lead two discussion sections on Wednesdays, 12:30-1:45 and 2-3:15 and will be responsible for grading student written work. I don't have pay information right at hand but I will touch base with the core curriculum office to be able to provide a figure to students who might be interested in this role.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
"[Arday's] shortcomings were depicted not just as the usual failures of rigour in publishing or academia but as exceptional proof that ethnic diversity at Cambridge — where 0.4 per cent of academic staff are Black — has gone too far."
ft.com
The difficult truth about Jason Arday
From the beginning, investigations were accompanied by a cloud of excessive references to his race
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Reposted by Abe Silberstein
Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Whatever the motivation for this attack, it is clear it was not inspired by Mayor Mamdani's criticisms of the state of Israel, and we cannot allow people to cynically make that connection. forward.com/news/845321/...
forward.com
Man charged in Central Synagogue attack linked to posts about Israel, Judaism, and Mamdani
Aunt of Larry Montes said she believed he wanted to become Jewish
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
What are we doing here? Celeste didn't write the headline to the essay, which is her personal story and not generally applicable advice for everyone. Nor is she in any way connected to the Times's past coverage of trans people.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
I'm admittedly much further left on Israel/Palestine than I used to be, but the invective from the Jewish Right never changed. They're not for making careful distinctions between liberal Zionists, non-Zionists, and anti-Zionists. J Street, IfNotNow, JVP—it's all the same to them.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
I'm sure it caused strain at the time, but in retrospect the Berkeley-based Independent Socialist Club's position on the Vietnam War is terribly amusing. The line was to support the NLF militarily but not politically. They did neither, but still expelled members who advocated doing neither.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
The Central Synagogue intruder and assailant appears to be someone who was plugged into conservative slop targeted at the Gen X+ demographic.
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Abe Silberstein @abesilbe.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
He was only famous because of the media attention. You don't know anyone else in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge.
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Reposted by Abe Silberstein
Frank Amari @frankamari.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Democratic socialism has been rising in the U.S. for over 50 years A number of DSA-endorsed candidates are winning Democratic primaries, building on a strategy from the 1970s. www.inquirer.com/politics/nat...
inquirer.com
Democratic socialism has been rising in the U.S. for over 50 years
A number of DSA-endorsed candidates are winning Democratic primaries, building on a strategy from the 1970s.
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