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This Week:

• Republican Leaders Provide Light in a Dark Time
• What Is an American?
• Norman Podhoretz, 1930-2025

• Short Takes

• Week's Best Tweets

• Upcoming Events

Republican Leaders Provide Light in a Dark Time

The holiday of Hanukkah is about the victory of the Jewish people in regaining their political sovereignty from the Seleucid Empire and defending their identity against Hellenism. It was a victory over assimilation and persecution that demonstrated the resilience and unquenchable faith of the Jewish people.

That resilience and faith have been called upon often this year, as Israel and the Jewish people have faced war, terrorism, threats, and antisemitic abuse of all kinds.

In the US, we have seen light in this dark time thanks to our unwavering friends and allies in the Republican Party, the one truly pro-Israel and pro-Jewish party in this country. In word and action, they have stood with our community and with Israel.

Republicans from President Donald Trump to members of the House and Senate, down to local officials have been outspoken and active in defense of Jewish Americans. (To give just one example, Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters expressed solidarity with the American Jewish community in remarks quoted here.)

At the White House Hanukkah party this week, Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), addressed President Trump: "You don’t just express solidarity. You practice solidarity with the Jewish people. And you practice solidarity with Israel, perhaps in a way we’ve never seen before."

Trump’s support for the Jewish community, Shemtov said, was "to the extent that many people say and many people believe that you may very well be — even among the friends of Israel and the Jewish people we’ve had — the most, the strongest, the deepest friend that Israel, and the Jewish people have ever had here in the White House."

See the full video of the President's remarks at the Hanukkah party here.

What Is an American?

In an op-ed at the New York Times (gift link), Vivek Ramaswamy contrasts what he sees as two competing, incompatible visions emerging on the American right. "One vision of American identity is based on lineage, blood and soil: Inherited attributes matter."

This is the view being popularized by the "Groypers", led by people like the antisemitic bottom feeder Nick Fuentes.

The alternative, Ramaswamy says, is "a vision of American identity is based on ideals." He explains:

Americanness isn’t a scalar quality that varies based on your ancestry. It’s binary: Either you’re an American or you’re not. You are an American if you believe in the rule of law, in freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, in colorblind meritocracy, in the US Constitution, in the American dream, and if you are a citizen who swears exclusive allegiance to our nation.

Defending that vision of American identity requires grappling with the economic and social ills pushing young people to the political extremes on both sides of the aisle. Ramaswamy lays out some practical and inspiring goals to do just that.

The full article is well worth your time.

Norman Podhoretz, 1930-2025

The conservative movement lost one of its most eloquent and influential spokesmen this week with the passing of former editor-in-chief of Commentary magazine editor Norman Podhoretz.

Podhoretz was a long-serving member of the Jewish Policy Center Board of Fellows and was connected to the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Senator Tom Cotton has written an excellent remembrance of the man and his impact:

Not many men truly change the course of history. Those who do usually do it through their actions, like General U.S. Grant’s brilliant military campaigns in the Civil War. Fewer still do it with a combination of words and actions, like Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps rarest of all are men like Norman Podhoretz, who change history with mere words.

And what words they were. Norman was not only the long-time legendary editor and soul of COMMENTARY, but also a prolific author of a dozen books, hundreds of essays, articles, and columns, and no telling how many speeches. He could turn out 10,000 words of elegant, sparkling, cogent prose seemingly at a moment’s notice while identifying for his readers the deeper meaning of the day’s news.

Norman was also an original neoconservative, and proud to be so. These days, some historically illiterate podcasters and so-called influencers use the term “neocon” as an all-purpose slur for anything they don’t like. But the neocons were just that—new conservatives—a collection of anti-communist liberals between World War II and the Vietnam War who were, as the saying goes, mugged by reality, in this case the reality of the New Left’s turn against America.

Norman followed this path and blazed it for others…

He taught multiple generations not just to love our country, but also why we should love it and how to defend it. His words reached into the United States Congress, into the Oval Office, and into the councils of nations.

Without Norman and the little magazine he led, the course of history—the Reagan Revolution and the Cold War in particular—might indeed have been very different. I therefore join Norman’s family not only in mourning the loss of this great man, but also in celebrating the highly consequential life of a true American patriot.

Norman Podhoretz's articles at Commentary are collected here.

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Short Takes

Leibovitz: The People of Forever Are Not Afraid

Almost immediately after the shooting in Sydney, some on social media took to sharing the famous photograph of a menorah in a window in Kiel, Germany, in 1931, with the Nazi flag hanging from the facade of the party’s regional headquarters across the street. The photo is indeed worth a thousand words: Hanukkah has never been a holiday of passive faith. It commemorates a moment when Jews refused to surrender their identity to those who demanded conformity. Hanukkah teaches that Jewish survival is not rooted in denial of danger, but in the courage to affirm who we are anyway.

Nearly a century later, we still light menorahs with joy and conviction, whereas the Nazi flag and those who believed in it are all gone. Nearly a century later, the Jewish state leads the way in everything from innovation to birthrates to happiness, while the birthplace of Goethe and Schiller finds its fertility in free fall, its politics in turmoil, and its future darkened by violent invaders who despise its culture and show it no fealty or gratitude.

Today’s Nazis will soon meet a similarly grim ending, their green-red-white-and-black flag tossed to the same dustbin of history as the swastika. Let the savages ululate their blood libels as they always have. Let them accuse the Jews of whatever they want. The people of forever aren’t afraid.

Doran: Tucker Carlson claims Israel is a burden on the US. It reveals profound strategic ignorance

The claim that American military assistance to Israel is charity rather than strategy is not merely wrong; it betrays a profound ignorance of how US power is projected, tested and preserved. It is worth examining what the United States actually gets in return and why this investment serves American interests first and foremost.

JI: Ben Shapiro calls on Heritage Foundation to draw red line against Tucker Carlson

"I want to begin by acknowledging the elephant in the room. The conservative movement is in flux. It’s in flux because of the systemic failure by conservative leaders to do what any good leaders must do: define and maintain the foundations of that movement,” said Shapiro, who had previously called out Heritage in a November episode of his podcast. “This is our job."

Video of Shapiro's remarks is here.

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Events

The RJC wishes you a light-filled and joyous holiday!