It feels extremely difficult to come up with a detached take on Jason Zengerle’s excellent new New York article about l’affaire Beinart, and so I won’t try (although in a couple hours I hope to advance a small part of the story, so stay tuned). The article is so much about our world, which is my world (I am quoted in it), that the first time I read it, I suspected I had come down with a Truman Show delusion, in which you believe you are the star of a gigantic reality television show.
But really, it’s a very good piece, full of rich characters, momentous politics, and bickering Jews. I imagine it’s what you will want to spend the morning reading and discussing, and the comments section of this post seem like as good a place as any, so have at it!
And some annotating: here is editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse’s review of The Crisis of Zionism; here is Nextbook Press editor Jonathan Rosen’s; here is Bret Stephens’, in Tablet Magazine. Here is Allison Hoffman’s superb curtain-raiser to the show that Zengerle has superbly closed (?). And here are a few of the posts that made The Scroll feel monomanaical and led me to conclude that, sometimes, life imitates Beinart.
The Israeli Desert [NY Mag]
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.