Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership

American Jews are under assault, their institutions under siege, and their leaders are failing to protect them due to conflicting ideological loyalties and a deficit of courage. 

“Adam Unrehearsed will shake your soul out. It’s comical. It’s lyrical. It’s menacing. It’s gritty. It’s tender. And it rings true. Futterman’s novel returns us to that moment in our lives when we begin to try to grasp the seemingly ungraspable adult world. It brilliantly captures the shifting sands of boyhood friendships, sibling adulation, and the confusion that marks even the best intentions of mentors and students. This is a sure-handed debut, compassionate and propulsive. It nudges up against today and reaches back to the past where our betrayals and alliances infinitely lie.”

–Colum McCann, Author of Let the Great World Spin (National Book Award for Fiction), Transatlantic and Apeirogon (National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, Longlisted for the Booker Prize)

“This hilarious, deeply moving, beautifully written novel brilliantly captures the atmosphere and the angst of Jewish New York of the early 1970s. Adam Unrehearsed is an American Jewish coming of age story, whose twelve-year-old protagonist struggles to understand his relationship to the Holocaust, the Soviet Jewry protest movement and black-Jewish tensions, while navigating the torments of junior high school and his impending bar mitzvah. The portrayal of young Adam’s inner life, and his emerging Jewish identity, is one of the best I’ve read in contemporary American Jewish fiction. Don Futterman has written a classic.”

–Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute and author of Like Dreamers, winner of the Jewish Book Council’s Everett Book of the Year Award  

“Don Futterman is a master storyteller. In this gripping, moving, coming-of-age novel, Futterman bravely explores the often-unspoken boundaries children growing up in multicultural environments learn to navigate instinctively. With a sharp eye and a pitch-perfect ear, Futterman deftly brings those of us who grew up in Queens right back to that rich, complex, world—without forgetting those who would find that time and place unfamiliar. Most important of all, this must-read is a fun-read.”

–Gil Troy, author of Age of Clinton and The Zionist Ideas

This book—perhaps the first devoted to this topic—documents the devastating failure of the Jewish establishment, including its leaders and major donors, to defend and protect American Jews as anti–Semitism surges across the country. It is a collection of essays by writers who care about the welfare of the Jewish community. Some of the essayists are prominent, some are local activists
engaged in ongoing battles to defend the community. Some essays offer analyses, others give disturbing, in–depth accounts of the failures themselves. All of them rebuke the Jewish leaders and institutions who have abandoned their responsibilities. While Jewish leaders cling to a utopian belief system which comports with their naïve political ideology, the ugly reality their mindset ignores only worsens. Betrayed by their leaders, the essayists argue, American Jews require new, strong leadership.

The book itself is an expanded version of a collection published in the Spring 2022 issue of White Rose Magazine, a publication which promotes classical liberalism in the face of political extremism and is named in honor of the anti–Nazi White Rose resistance movement.

Featuring Essays by
Jonathan S. Tobin
Richard A. Landes
Joshua Block
Rebecca Sugar
Caroline B. Glick
Naya Lekht
Richard Kronenfeld
Bruce D. Abramson
Thane Rosenbaum
Morton A. Klein
Alan M. Dershowitz
Rabbi Cary Kozberg
M. Zuhdi Jasser
William A. Jacobson
Johanna E. Markind
Rebecca G. Schgallis
Karen D. Hurvitz
Joanne Bregman
Lauri B. Regan
Dr. Amy Rosenthal
Josh Ravitch
Henry Srebrnik
Ben Poser