I did not set out to write a book called BAD JEW. The title came later, after I had already spent a long time trying to understand what had changed in me after October 7 and why so many political assumptions I had carried for years suddenly felt unstable. I had been active in Democratic politics for much of my adult life. I had worked for Barack Obama, volunteered for Bernie Sanders, and spent years around people who believed, as I did, that politics was ultimately about fairness, rights, opportunity, and protecting people who were vulnerable.

Then October 7 happened, and the attack itself was followed almost immediately by something I was not prepared for. Before Israel had even mounted a major response, before the war had produced the arguments that would dominate the months that followed, I was watching people explain, minimize, qualify, and in some cases celebrate what had just happened to Israelis. The speed of that reaction mattered to me. It made it much harder to pretend that what I was seeing was simply criticism of Israeli policy.

That was the beginning of the book.

I have used the phrase “October 8 Jew” because October 7 was the attack, but October 8 was the realization. It was the day I began to understand that some of the people and institutions I had considered political allies were operating from assumptions about Jews and Israel that I had either ignored, underestimated, or never fully confronted.

That realization did not turn me into a different person overnight. I still believe in many of the same things I believed before October 7. I still believe healthcare should be treated as a basic right. I still believe in environmental protection, civil rights, a strong social safety net, and a government that should do more to make ordinary people’s lives workable. What changed was my willingness to accept political language at face value.

Words like........

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