Emily Tamkin With Brian Siegal: A Conversation

Brian Siegal serves as regional director of AJC Miami and Broward County. In Miami, he has helped build coalitions with other ethnic and religious groups to address critical domestic and international issues, including energy security, immigration reform, human rights, and civil rights. He holds a B.A. in humanities with high honors, a J.D. with honors from the University of Texas at Austin, and two master’s degrees from New York University in Jewish studies and nonprofit management. He spent 2001-02 in Israel as a Dorot Fellow, clerking for the chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court and working at the Israel Democracy Institute.

Emily Tamkin is the United States. editor at The New Statesman, in which capacity she covers U.S .politics, foreign policy, and culture. A former staff writer at BuzzFeed News and Foreign Policy, her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, Columbia Journalism Review, Politico, The New Republic, and The Washington Post, among other publications. What does it mean to be a Bad Jew? You can be called a Bad Jew if you don’t keep kosher; if you only go to temple on Yom Kippur; if you enjoy Christmas music; if you don’t call your mother often enough. The list is endless. In Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities (Harper), Tamkin argues that perhaps there is no answer to this timeless question. Several million people identify themselves as American Jews, but that doesn’t mean they all identify with one another. Drawing on more than 150 interviews, she examines the last 100 years of American Jewish politics, culture, identities, and arguments. She tracks many evolving and conflicting Jewish positions on assimilation and race, Zionism and Israel, affluence and poverty, philanthropy, finance, politics, and social justice. Perhaps the one truth about American Jewish identity is this: It is always changing.