Living with Hate in American Politics and Religion

Jeffrey Israel has written an amazing book. He wants us to love America in a distinctly political register that ties our individual flourishing to the flourishing of every compatriot. Political love is essential to realizing the promise of justice. But he knows that political love must live alongside historically rooted animosities that deeply divide us. Israel squares this apparent circle with play. In play, we give full-throated voice to our animosities: we engage them, with no thought of transcending them. Seems too good to be true? Start with the beautiful chapter on Lenny Bruce, and then go for a great ride.--Joshua Cohen, author of The Arc of the Moral Universe and Other Essays In the post-World War II era, Jews, many of them the children of immigrants, moved into a prominent place in the production of the nation's popular culture and sought to make sense of their relationship with the many other kinds of Americans with whom they shared their society. Drawing on a deep and nuanced understanding of this history, Jeffrey Israel makes a compelling case for the importance of play in allowing Americans to live together.--Hasia Diner, author of We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945-1962 How can a more perfect American union be attained given our legacy of historical group injustices and corresponding enduring group antagonisms? In this brilliantly original synthesis of insights from political philosophy, moral psychology, and Jewish American humor, Jeffrey Israel argues that through 'play'--not a facile (and unachievable) national Kumbaya reconciliation, but a reenacting of grudges in a bracketed psychological space backgrounding the political--we can at least come to live with each other in a way that recognizes our common vulnerable humanity.--Charles W. Mills, author of Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism Reality might fall short of the ideal, but Jeffrey Israel does not. Living with Hate in American Politics and Religion is so wonderfully fluid that it feels as though Israel is reading a scholarly bedtime story.--Martin Kavka, author of Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy