Batya Ungar-Sargon in Conversation with Bret Stephens: The Jews and the Left

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Are the political allegiances of American Jews due for a reset? Join The Free Press’ Batya Ungar-Sargon for a conversation with New York Times columnist Bret Stephens about the shifting politics of Jewish life and her new book, The Jews and the Left.

For a century, Jews have been at the forefront of every liberal cause in America, from the labor movement to the Civil Rights era to the fight for bodily autonomy and LGBTQ+ rights. If you ask them why they are Democrats, many will say it’s because they are Jews. In The Jews and the Left, Batya Ungar-Sargon asks a bracing question about one of the most deeply rooted political relationships in modern American life: how did Jews become so deeply identified with liberal politics, and what happens when that alliance begins to fracture? Ungar-Barton — who made her own political shift from the progressive left to become an outspoken critic and political independent — believes that parts of the contemporary left have made Jewish belonging conditional, especially when it comes to the support of Israel, creating a political climate in which many Jews feel alienated from movements they once helped build.

Many Jews insist that antisemitic violence has been more common on the right than on the left. Ungar-Sargon and Stephens, in their extensive writing and reporting on the political allegiances of American Jews, contend that the reality is far more complicated, and more troubling. In a conversation about Jewish identity throughout American history and the shifting lines of antisemitism after October 7, hear the complicated history behind a slow-moving political rupture, and what it might mean for our future — a provocative history of solidarity, betrayal, and political change.