Anonymous ID: e26008 Dec. 10, 2021, 3:03 p.m. No.15172720   🗄️.is đź”—kun

The Trump Presidency and American Jews: Reflections on my Forthcoming Book

 

Steven Windmueller

Dec 10, 2021, 5:34 PM

 

This coming week the 2021 USC Casden Institute’s Annual will be released. This volume examines the impact of Donald Trump’s Presidency on American Jewry and Israel. I was privileged to have been invited to serve as the editor for this publication.

 

In undertaking this project, I wanted to understand the residual effects of the Trump Presidency. Our 45th President changed our nation’s political culture. Trump has also had a profound impact on the Jewish community and the State of Israel, just as Trumpism is continuing to be a key political force within this society.

 

On average, as presidents step away, we are reminded that some 500 books are generally introduced to explain that particular person’s political impact on the nation and the global scene. In the case of Donald Trump, some 4500 publications have already appeared, each trying to unlock this unique moment in the American political saga. The USC volume will be only the second Jewish response to the Trump Presidency.

 

Excerpts from Contributing Writers:

 

Dr. Gary Zola of the American Jewish Archives of HUC-JIR points to the culture of synthesis that binds Americanism with Judaism. In his essay Rabbi Zola identifies four characteristics of “Trumpism” that have undermined the welfare and status of Jews in this nation, the promotion of anti-Semitism, faith in the durability of America’s democratic institutions, the undermining of truth, and the rise of a distinctive parochialism that seeks to dismiss Jewish universalism. Zola provides a contrast on how the Trump Presidency compared with other former presidents in relating to the Jewish community.

 

The arrival of Donald Trump on the political stage, according to AJU Holocaust historian Michael Berenbaum “has made it so much easier to explain the rise of Nazism.” Berenbaum embraces T George Packer’s views as laid out in The Atlantic:“ America under Trump became less free, less equal, more divided, more alone, deeper in debt, swampier, dirtier, meaner, sicker, and deader. It has also become more delusional.”

 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-trump-presidency-and-american-jews-reflections-on-my-forthcoming-book/