Cold War Ghosts: The American Afterlife of Soviet Antizionism with Shaul Kelner

Antizionism has been described as a hate movement, as a form of anti-Jewish bigotry, and, as I argue, the third era of Jew-hatred. But it can also be understood as one of the most powerful social movements of our time. Powerful not only in its reach, but in its ability to unify—cutting across political parties, generations, and national borders.So who better to explore antizionism as a social movement than my guest today, Professor Shaul Kelner of Vanderbilt University, a scholar of Jewish Studies and Sociology who specializes in contemporary Jewish life. His latest book, A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews, won a National Jewish Book Award and examines how American Jews organized across ideological divides for a shared cause.I invited Professor Kelner because he recently authored what I consider one of the most important papers on the subject: American Antizionism. The title itself is telling. While many scholars trace antizionism’s Soviet genealogy, Shaul pushes us to examine how it has taken root and evolved in the United States. What does antizionism look like in the American context? How has it embedded itself in civic, academic, and Jewish institutional spaces? And why has there been so little education or clarity about it within American Jewish institutions themselves?We begin with Shaul’s research on the Soviet Jewry movement and then turn to a striking contrast: how antizionism, once engineered as state propaganda in the Soviet Union, has become more socially powerful and more normalized here in the United States than in the very system that produced it. Find out why. Listen. Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom.