For Emmanuel Acho and Noa Tishby no question about Jews is off-limits. They go there. They cover Jews and money. Jews and power. Jews and privilege. Jews and white privilege. Emmanuel asks, Did Jews kill Jesus? To which Noa responds, "Why are Jewish people history's favorite scapegoat?" They unpack Judaism itself: Is it a religion, culture, a peoplehood, or a race? And: Are you antisemitic if you're anti-Zionist?
The topics are complicated and Acho and Tishby bring vastly different perspectives. Tishby is an outspoken Israeli American. Acho is a mild-mannered son of a Nigerian American pastor. But they share a superpower: an uncanny ability to make complicated ideas easy to understand so anyone can follow the straight line from the past to our immediate moment - and then see around corners.
Informative and accessible, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew has a unique structure: Acho asks questions and Tishby answers them with deeply personal, historical, and political responses. This book will enable anyone to explain - and identify - what Jewish hatred looks like. It is a much-needed lexicon for this fraught moment in Jewish history. As Acho says, "Proximity breeds care and distance breeds fear."
