On the June issue:

Our Jewish Future

To the Editor:
In “The Future of American Jewry After October 7” (June), Dan Senor writes that the answer to anti-Semitism is “shockingly simple” and lies not in telling a better Jewish story to the world, or in supporting non-Jewish causes to generate goodwill. “We must lead Jewish lives,” he writes. “For this is what has sustained Jewish life, and Jewish existence, in every century.”

Senor’s analysis is reminiscent of Theodor Herzl’s 1896 essay titled “Judaism,” which argued that Jewish identity was the key to the “lost inner wholeness” of his contemporary Jews, and that a generation grown apart from Judaism could “neither rely upon our past nor look to our future.”

A century later, the Jews have recreated their state, in a part of the world where it once stood for centuries, and they have built a vibrant Diaspora in the country that welcomed them after the late-19th- and early-20th-century pogroms. But young American Jews have entered college without a substantial knowledge of their history and heritage—rendering them intellectually defenseless against the facile arguments of “settler colonialism” and pervasive woke slogans.  

After October 7, American Jewish University created a college-credit course on Israel for high-school students. Not only did demand for the course exceed expectations, but parents inquired about taking it themselves, to facilitate conversations with their children. It confirms that the key to the Jewish future is not better public relations to educate the world, but better Jewish education to educate ourselves. 

Rick Richman
Resident Scholar
American Jewish University
Los Angeles

To the Editor:
Thank you for publishing Dan Senor’s excellent piece, “The Future of American Jewry After October 7.”  The points he makes resonate deeply with me. I grew up in a Reform household and had a bar mitzvah. My family visited Israel once, and I went to a Jewish day camp one summer. As an adult, I had very little formal connection to Judaism. After October 7, I started to see so many of the people and institutions that I thought I was aligned with attacking Israel and the Jewish people. I was confused, disappointed, and finally angry. 

I decided that the best thing I could do was to commit to a more Jewish life for myself and my family. We joined our local Reform temple and enrolled our daughter in their weekly religious school. I’m participating in the Simchat Torah challenge. We now put more effort into, and get more enjoyment from, our Shabbat and holiday celebrations. I shifted my philanthropic donations from a variety of liberal causes to the AJC and my temple. We are planning to go to a Jewish family camp this summer, and I’m planning a family trip to Israel next year. I want to show my daughter everything I saw there when I went as a teenager.  

Dan Senor couldn’t be more right: The best thing we can do as American Jews is what’s always been the best thing for us: embrace our traditions, teach our children, support the State of Israel, be proud, and give back. We have been given a gift; now is the time to make the most of it. Am Yisrael chai.
David Leon
Seattle

To the Editor:
Dan Senor’s superb article tackles a problem long suppressed within the Jewish community: the wrong-headed allocation of individual and community funds to activities and organizations that perpetuate rather than challenge the myths about the merits of assimilation and secularization. 

I would emphasize only one additional point. Perhaps we should be reintegrating disoriented college-age students and their Jewish professors into the Jewish community. One possibility could be in deepening and enhancing academic ties between Israel and the Diaspora. Gap-year programs, Birthright, and repeated visits to Israel are good introductions, but they are not sufficient. One experience that appears to have a serious long-term impact on forming profound Jewish identification in young men and women is participation in the IDF or attendance at Israeli universities. 

There is at present a unique opportunity for dissatisfied Jewish donors to help create new universities or fund existing ones in Israel. Such a program could accommodate the thousands of Jewish students abroad who are no longer welcome at Diaspora universities. At the same time, it would open attractive positions for the very large number of first-rate Jewish scholars who no longer wish to be affiliated with those subversive institutions. Some modest developments are now occurring in Israel, but a massive allocation of resources could help rescue a large number of otherwise lost young women and men. And the creation of an even more excellent academic infrastructure would provide innumerable benefits to Israel.
Harvey Lithwick
Ra’anana, Israel

Fetterman’s Fervor

To the Editor:
I thoroughly enjoyed Meir Y. Soloveichik’s article on John Fetterman. It’s very well written, and Soloveichik clearly explains Senator Fetterman’s courage in saying what he knows deeply to be the truth. And the article lays out the hypocrisy of the powers that be in the Democratic Party.

Also, this was the first time I have read about Warden Cresson’s life—what a story!

It’s a joy and a delight to have people in America who deeply love the Jewish people and stand with us.
Robert Kapchan
Amherst, New York

To the Editor:
In praising Meir Y. Soloveichik for his column about John Fetterman, “The Sanity of John Fetterman” (June), I feel compelled to paraphrase Jackie Gleason. “How geshmak it is” to read his words. Both Rabbi Soloveichik and Fetterman are voices of truth and reason in a world gone mad.
Joel M. Schreiber
Lido Beach, New York

A Lack of Abundance

To the Editor:
In his review of Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Michael Woronoff correctly notes the importance of economic growth and the danger of government intervention limiting that growth (“What Liberals Mean by ‘Abundance,” June). He is right to be skeptical of “enlightened policymakers” who are appointed to decide how to make government “better.”

His portrayal of the capitalist economic system as the unfettered expression of individual economic and social preferences, however, is dubious. The massive influence of corporations and the ultra-wealthy in manipulating the choices available to individuals and the very marketplace in which they make economic decisions necessitates the
representative democratic process. It is this process that is equipped and designed to decide what “better” means, and it cannot be delegated to the invisible hand of the market. 

Moreover, as Klein and Thompson point out, social benefit and negative externalities are not effectively represented in the marketplace, even if there were perfect competition. Woronoff quotes Thomas Sowell in noting that who decides what is “best” is a crucial consideration. While the marketplace represents individual consumers to some extent, it much better represents those with more wealth and income. By advocating for reduced government intervention, Woronoff is validating this intrinsic departure of capitalism from modern conceptions of natural rights. 

Until we decide that wealth, not inalienable rights, is the best judge of human worth, significant government intervention will be necessary to correct for the disconnect between the market and externalities, as well as the disconnect between rights bought by money and those earned by human birthright. And such spending must rise with the size of the gargantuan economy that the government has helped create. Whether or not Klein and Thompson’s solutions are correct, the democratic process, and not the market, is the duly appointed representative of the American people.
Jacob Grosof
Waltham, Massachusetts

Michael Woronoff writes:
Jacob Grosof’s letter offers a sincere defense of democratic policymaking and expresses a genuine concern about market failures and inequality. But his critique misreads my views on capitalism. At issue is not whether representative democracy has a role in shaping economic outcomes—it certainly does—but rather the appropriate extent of that role and whether government intervention is helping or hurting the people it aims to serve.

Grosof appeals to democracy as the necessary counterweight to the influence of corporations and the ultra-wealthy. But the democratic process he champions is more subject to elite capture than the market is. This is not accidental but systematic, rooted in misplaced incentives and insulation from competitive pressures to which the market is subject. And when democratic mechanisms are inevitably harnessed by entrenched interests, including labor unions, environmental lobbies, and, yes, corporations, the result is a sprawling regulatory state that exacerbates scarcity rather than corrects it. California’s catastrophic failures on housing and homelessness are not the natural result of corporate greed but of regulators choking supply in the name of progressive goals.

Grosof notes that social goods and externalities aren’t effectively priced in markets. That’s true, but recognition of market failure does not imply that government succeeds by default. Government intervention often creates new externalities while failing to solve the original ones. Environmental regulations meant to address pollution have been weaponized to block housing development, creating homelessness externalities that may be worse than the original environmental harm. As Abundance makes clear, government routinely substitutes bureaucracy for outcomes. Klein and Thompson correctly identify this dysfunction but then pivot and suggest that more technocratic control is the answer. That’s the contradiction at the heart of their thesis. Their diagnosis is clear-eyed; their prescription is wishful thinking.

Grosof’s assumption that government spending must “rise with the size of the gargantuan economy” ignores the core insight of the book’s argument: that building abundance requires removing the constraints stopping us from producing what people need—housing, energy, infrastructure—not simply redistributing access to what exists. Capitalism, by creating wealth and opportunities, has lifted more people out of poverty than any redistributive program ever has. Whatever one believes about government’s appropriate role, success must be judged by outcomes, not intentions. A successful government would produce results. And right now, progressive governments are failing to deliver not because they are too small, but because they are doing too many things, poorly.