About this item
Trouble in the Tribe explores the increasingly contentious place of Israel in the American Jewish community. In a fundamental shift, growing numbers of American Jews have become less willing to unquestioningly support Israel and more willing to publicly criticize its government. More than ever before, American Jews are arguing about Israeli policies, and many, especially younger ones, are becoming uncomfortable with Israel's treatment of Palestinians. Dov Waxman argues that Israel is fast becoming a source of disunity for American Jewry, and that a new era of American Jewish conflict over Israel is replacing the old era of solidarity. Drawing on a wealth of in-depth interviews with American Jewish leaders and activists, Waxman shows why Israel has become such a divisive issue among American Jews. He delves into the American Jewish debate about Israel, examining the impact that the conflict over Israel is having on Jewish communities, national Jewish organizations, and on the pro-Israel lobby. Waxman sets this conflict in the context of broader cultural, political, institutional, and demographic changes happening in the American Jewish community. He offers a nuanced and balanced account of how this conflict over Israel has developed and what it means for the future of American Jewish politics. Israel used to bring American Jews together. Now it is driving them apart. Trouble in the Tribe explains why.
About the Author
Dov Waxman is the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair of Israel Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Professor of Political Science. He is also the director of the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. Before joining UCLA, he was the Stotsky Professor of Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies at Northeastern University and the co-director of Northeastern University's Middle East Center. An award-winning teacher, he has also been a professor at the City University of New York and Bowdoin College. He has had visiting fellowships at Oxford University, Tel Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, and his B.A. from Oxford University. His research focuses on the conflict over Israel-Palestine, Israeli politics and foreign policy, U.S.-Israel relations, American Jewry's relationship with Israel, Jewish politics, and contemporary antisemitism. He is the author of dozens of scholarly articles and four books: The Pursuit of Peace and The Crisis of Israeli Identity: Defending / Defining the Nation (Palgrave, 2006) , Israel's Palestinians: The Conflict Within (Cambridge University Press, 2011) , Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel (Princeton University Press, 2016) , and most recently, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2019) . His writing has also been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Slate, Salon, Foreign Policy, The National Interest, The Washington Quarterly and Ha'aretz.
