Join us for a special presentation with Peter Beinart, who will discuss his new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. We will meet at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, 7:00 p.m. Central, and 5:00 p.m. Pacific.

In Peter Beinart’s view, one story dominates Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of Jewish religious tradition and warps our understanding of Israel and Palestine. After Gaza, where Jewish texts, history, and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation, Beinart argues, Jews must tell a new story. After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, they must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the question: What does it mean to be a Jew?

Beinart imagines an alternate narrative, which would draw on other nations’ efforts at moral reconstruction and a different reading of Jewish tradition. A story in which Israeli Jews have the right to equality, not supremacy, and in which Jewish and Palestinian safety are not mutually exclusive but intertwined. One that recognizes the danger of venerating states at the expense of human life.

Peter Beinart teaches national reporting and opinion writing at the Newmark J-School and political science at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, an MSNBC political commentator, author of The Beinart Notebook on Substack, a fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and the author of Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza.

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