There is a thing where people write into Jewish publications—yes, including The CJN—and ask for their names to be removed from old articles. Not because these are news stories about them holding up a convenience store or whatever, but rather because the stories reveal that they’re Jews. They fear being known to be Jewish is a liability professionally. They go to the very people whose names are on the mastheads of Jewish communal publications and make these craven if understandable requests.

What was that? You want receipts? You want a list, by name, of the Jews who ask not to be named as such in the Jewish press?

Or do you want proof that these individuals would be discriminated against by specific prospective employers if it were googleable that they once attended a Jewish summer camp or some such?

If someone did a survey that found that contrary to all the angst, unemployment among the identifiably Jewish had gone down in recent years, what would change? To my knowledge no survey addressing this topic exists. It’s a hypothetical whose relevance is about to become clear.

Josh Lambert, an English and Jewish Studies professor, and Dan Sinykin, and professor of English, wrote a great big article promising to debunk the PEN America story (covered previously here in column and podcast) about the stifling literary landscape for Jewish and Israeli authors. They pick through the evidence in “A Silent Moratorium” and find that contrary to its claims, there is no silencing of Jewish or Israeli literature, only an unwillingness on the part of dignified publishing professionals to take on the likes of Shai Davidai or to accept grant funds from the Israeli government. Lambert and Sinykin’s splashiest claim: “Using our methodology, 2025 turns out to be the third-best year of the 21st century for book deals that ‘publicly signaled Jewish or Israeli content.’”

When I saw the venue—Jewish Currents—I immediately wished it was anything but this. Not because I have some purity-politics objection to giving them traffic, but because I would have loved if a publication open to finding any result here would have taken on a question that has frustrated me as well: What exactly is going on with Jews in publishing these days? I’m aware that there’s no such thing as a neutral outlet. But if the aim was sorting out what’s really going on, quantitatively, for Jews and Israelis in American book publishing, it would have been nice not to start with such a foregone conclusion. This, I figured, will be an article about how antisemitism in publishing is a made-up problem, or if it’s happening it’s because the Jews in question are Zionists and had it coming. And what do you know!

I began the article prepared to whip out the old Clickhole meme, “Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point.” In reality, it’s more like, some people whose politics are not my own made a range of points, strong and some quite silly.

Time to spell out my own biases and priors, and situate myself in the field.

I believe there is something up where Jews and publishing are concerned, as well as the prior that quantitative data on what that something is remains hazy. I’ve discussed these topics on The Jewish Angle with Meg Keene both before and after her entry into this field, as well as Emma Forrest and Leigh Stein, and in the DMs or on the phone with Jewish writers who shall remain nameless, who wonder what hope a writer has these days if they’re Jewish and lack anti-Zionist credentials, and come to me........

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