Joel S.
@joelhs.bsky.social
9.3K followers 3.3K following 8.1K posts
Professor of Religion and Jewish Studies, Sarah Lawrence College. PhD in Religious Studies, University of Chicago. Globalist elite and Thing-in-Itself-hating Jew. Husband of @petticoatshrink.bsky.social‬. He/Him/הוא/ער
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joelhs.bsky.social
"Why can't we be friends with people across partisan lines?"
santiagomayer.com
Holy shit. This is Angelo Elia, a legislative correspondent for Congressman Dave Taylor.

According to @rooster.info, during a Zoom meeting today, he had an American nazi flag displayed in the background.
joelhs.bsky.social
Students writing public op-eds criticizing the state of Israel: "Deport them! They're adults responsible for their actions!"

Students privately praising Hitler: "Kids will be kids."
joelhs.bsky.social
I may not have agreed with everything he had to say, but he was doing public discourse and debate in the right way. That’s why I have to honor Pablo Christiani.
joelhs.bsky.social
I attended grad school in religion, which means I have Catholic, Orthodox Jewish, and Muslim friends who disagree with me strongly on various social issues, or even on Israel. We argue often! I still don’t want to befriend someone who friends with someone laughing about slavery or gas chambers.
joelhs.bsky.social
Centrist pundits are obsessed with
our inability to form friendships across partisan divides and how it is ruining the social fabric of America. But while I’d be happy to be friends with someone who disagrees with me about zoning laws, I don’t want to befriend someone who jokes about gas chambers.
politico.com
EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of leaked messages show leaders of Young Republican groups joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape in a private Telegram chat.

Inside rising GOP leaders’ racist chats — obtained by POLITICO and spanning more than 7 months👇
‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat
Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.
www.politico.com
joelhs.bsky.social
This conflation is how we end up with some ostensibly intelligent people earnestly proclaiming that some undergrads being a bit too overzealous in protesting campus speakers is in any way equivalent to the US government deporting students for writing op-eds.
joelhs.bsky.social
A large social crisis of the past decade or so has been caused by people conflating "My speech should be free of legal attempts to restrict it" with "My speech should bear no social consequences."
joelhs.bsky.social
"When I checked in on my friends, their reactions were mixed. Every one of them had their home destroyed. Every one of them was displaced more than once. Every one of them had at least one member of their family killed." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/o...
Opinion | What Trump’s Peace Deal Really Means for Gaza
www.nytimes.com
joelhs.bsky.social
Deciding it’s in her interest to focus on her oft-stated antisemitism more publicly than her also oft-stated Islamophobia for a few weeks does not enlightenment make.
atrupar.com
Jeffies on Marjorie Taylor Greene: "It does seem to many of us that she's had a surprisingly enlightened few weeks."
joelhs.bsky.social
If Israel adopted a constitution tomorrow to enfranchise everyone in the West Bank (not going to happen but hypothetically), some would argue Israel no longer exists in its present form, but others would say it exists and its political structure has just evolved.
joelhs.bsky.social
Some people think Israel existing means “maintaining a Jewish voting majority in perpetuity,” but I don’t think that’s straightforward at all and wish more polls asked questions to tease out that nuance.
joelhs.bsky.social
…we have older polling data suggesting 1 in 5 American Jews want Israel to exist as a binational state.
joelhs.bsky.social
The reason I find these questions unhelpful is that it’s rarely defined what conditions would have to be met for Israel “not to exist.” Some people think it would cease to exist if they enfranchised everyone in the West Bank and lost a Jewish voting majority, but…
joelhs.bsky.social
One of the predictions I most hope I am wrong about, but which I feel strongly will happen, is that within the next decade, we will see an open Holocaust revisionist elected to public office in the US. But they won't say outright, "It didn't happen." They'll say they're "just asking questions."
politico.com
EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of leaked messages show leaders of Young Republican groups joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape in a private Telegram chat.

Inside rising GOP leaders’ racist chats — obtained by POLITICO and spanning more than 7 months👇
‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat
Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.
www.politico.com
joelhs.bsky.social
This is a Christian Republican Senator shocked that most American Jews do not vote Republican, despite what Trump has done for Israel.

Too many American politicians do not understand that American Jews are not Israeli nationals in exile, and most do not prioritize Israel in deciding their vote.
atrupar.com
Markwayne Mullin: "I even met with some Jewish leaders in Oklahoma City and it was amazing because I walked in and they just wanted to hug and say 'thank you.' And one of them even said, 'I don't understand why so many Jewish communities vote Democrat.'"
joelhs.bsky.social
"The poll finds 42 percent of Jewish Americans say they’ve avoided publicly wearing, carrying or displaying anything that might help people identify them as Jewish in the past year. That is up from 26 percent who said that to a similar question in a 2023 poll." www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...
More U.S. Jews shield identity in public amid antisemitism fears, Post poll finds
A third of U.S. Jewish people say they don’t feel safe, and two-thirds report seeing antisemitic content online at least once a month, a Washington Post poll finds.
www.washingtonpost.com
joelhs.bsky.social
Taught a class about the Disputation of Barcelona today, and my students all thought Pablo Christiani. They compared him to Charlie Kirk - which is frankly a better comparison than most of the comparisons that public figures in the US are making to Charlie Kirk. Media should talk to my students.
joelhs.bsky.social
Today is the birthday of both Nietzsche and Foucault, which means it should really be some kind of Continental philosophy holiday.
joelhs.bsky.social
There’s a lot this guy doesn’t understand.
atrupar.com
Markwayne Mullin: "I even met with some Jewish leaders in Oklahoma City and it was amazing because I walked in and they just wanted to hug and say 'thank you.' And one of them even said, 'I don't understand why so many Jewish communities vote Democrat.'"