Bernie Sanders and the Other

My book Self Defense: A Jewish Manifesto is available at Amazon via Wicked Son Books and the Z3 Project.

Last month, the revered progressive politician Sen. Bernie Sanders was condemned in Jewish Insider by his former Jewish outreach head Joel Rubin, who renounced his former boss and accused him of enabling the conquest and colonization of the Democratic Party by antisemitic and antizionist politicians.

There can be no doubt that the charge is accurate. Indeed, perhaps no American Jew has done more damage to his own community than Sanders, and we must face what this means and its implications.

The lifelong socialist’s brutal treatment of his own people is, in some ways, inexplicable, but it is very real. A few examples suffice to prove it.

From the moment Sanders declared his first run for the presidency, his hostility to the mainstream Jewish community was evident. He initially refused to refer to his persecuted ancestors as “Jewish,” preferring the term “Polish”; falsely claimed Israel killed 10,000 Palestinians in the 2014 war; and surrounded himself with Israel-haters and antisemites like James Zogby and Cornel West.

He then proceeded to effectively sponsor the launch of what has become today’s Muslim-progressive antisemitic mass movement by running interference for Rep. Ilhan Omar when she charged American Jews with being loyal to a foreign country, buying off members of Congress, and effectively being corrupt traitors for supporting Israel. Sanders claimed that criticism of Omar was “outrageous” and “racist,” when it was Omar whose own claims were clearly “outrageous” and “racist.”

Sanders’s outrageous and indeed racist slanders were obvious in their intentions. He was serving as the antisemitic left’s sword and shield, using his Jewish identity to move the Overton Window towards antisemitism.

After the genocidal Oct. 7 massacre, Sanders enthusiastically joined in and indeed helped lead the resulting progressive-Muslim antisemitic mass movement as it rose to the commanding heights of leftist politics. He did initially condemn the massacre, but quickly pivoted towards defaming Israel, becoming one of the first senators to endorse the blood libel that Israel was committing a supposed “genocide” in Gaza.

He appeared indifferent to the fact that such libels have supercharged the antisemitic mass movement he had enabled, resulting in harassment, intimidation, vandalism, assault, and the murder of both Jews and non-Jews. This indifference has become permanent, with Sanders having issued essentially no condemnation of antisemitism on the left or in the Muslim community, let alone of the violence it has engendered.

Since then, Sanders has become not just a cheerleader for but perhaps the most powerful leader of a movement that constitutes an existential threat to his own community. As part of this suicidal crusade, he has endorsed and campaigned for almost every major antisemitic politician. Most recently, this largesse was extended to senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed, whose defamatory rhetoric against Israel represents perhaps the worst in the history of American politics. Sanders went so far as to swear in New York City’s antisemitic mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has gone on to engage in rampant incitement against Israel and his own Jewish community. This has resulted in a massive rise in antisemitic hate crimes, including attempted murder, and what I believe is the strong possibility of a major pogrom.

All of this adds up to a terrible condemnation, a condemnation that is written in Sanders’s own words and statements. The verdict is clear and inescapable: Sanders is a monster.

This is not a claim to be made lightly, but the evidence is mammoth and the crimes extraordinary. Sanders did not just participate in an antisemitic mass movement or serve as its court Jew. He helped build it. He has defended it at every turn. He has shown not the slightest compunction about inciting and justifying antisemitism. Though he has not engaged in violence himself, he clearly has no issue with its presence in the movement and enables it through silence. Jews and non-Jews have died because of what he has done.

However, the rabbis tell us that even the meshumad remains a Jew. It is worth asking, then, precisely what kind of Jew Sanders is. Clearly, he is a type with considerable historical precedent. He bears a strong resemblance to the likes of 13th-century apostate Nicholas Donin and 18th-century messianic pretender Jacob Frank. The first led a successful campaign against the Talmud and the second led his cult followers into mass conversion to Catholicism and participation in a blood libel case.

The best analogy, however, may be the ancient heretic rabbi Elisha ben Abuya. Elisha’s betrayal of his brethren included the adoption of pagan ways and participation in the murder of Torah students. The famous tale of the “four who entered the garden” states that, upon beholding a divine vision, Elisha “chopped down the saplings,” meaning he turned his efforts to not just leaving but destroying Judaism. As a result, he came to be known in rabbinic literature as “Acher”—the Other.

Sanders appears to be, in every way, an acher. He has chosen to be an Other to the Jewish community and apparently believes it necessary to destroy what he left behind. In a secular age, of course, no conversion was required of him, but he has unquestionably severed himself from the rest of us. Then, like Acher, for reasons unknown, he chopped down the saplings.

If there is anything to be done about Sanders, it is to treat him as an Other. The Jewish community must publicly and explicitly renounce and condemn him in no uncertain terms. It must declare upon him a secular herem. Sadly, this is essential if the Jewish community is to save itself from one of their own.