The letters below respond to our (Fixing) America issue of Spring 2026. Additional letters can be found on sapirjournal.org/letters. We welcome your responses to the current issue at [email protected].
To the Editor:
eihan Salam wrote a brilliant and brave essay analyzing two ideological tendencies in the American Muslim community. Most enlightening perhaps was his explanation for seemingly contradictory beliefs held by the Third Worldists. The example of “Queers for Palestine” is illustrative.
Sadly, the article veers into whataboutism when it compares the Third Worldist American Muslims to the radical Jews of the 1920s and ’30s. A comprehensive analysis will reveal that this comparison is rather superficial. For starters, the core of Jewish radicals was made up of immigrants from Eastern Europe who were reacting to the dire poverty that most Jews in the era suffered from. That stands in stark contrast to the wealthy, educated first-generation Muslim Third Worldists. Jewish radicalism, representing no more than 10–15 percent of the community, extinguished itself over time, as first- and second-generation Jews realized the American Dream. They raised themselves above the business and educational prejudice that was rampant then and assimilated, becoming civic-minded Americans. Finally, acts of violence and “civic terrorism” were decidedly rare.
So while both immigrant groups flirted with radical ideologies, the cultural, economic, behaviors, and historical contexts are quite different.
Cary C. Schwartzbach
Fairfax, Virginia
To the Editor:
avid Wolpe’s distinction between spirituality and religion is especially important. Spirituality can remain a feeling. Religion disciplines feeling through practice, community, ritual, sacrifice, and obligation. It asks us not merely to admire virtue but to perform it.
But this raises a further question. Religion forms people, yet it does not always form them for freedom. Religious traditions have cultivated humility and service, but they have also justified coercion, hierarchy, exclusion, and political supremacy. The public need is therefore not simply for “more religion,” but for forms of religious life capable of producing morally serious people who also accept equal citizenship, freedom of conscience, and constitutional limits on what any community may impose on others.
Religious institutions must also confront why so many people ceased to trust them. Any religious humbling of America must include a humbling of religion itself: acknowledgment of hypocrisy, abuse, political capture, and failures of moral authority.
Wolpe has nevertheless identified the indispensable problem. A free society cannot survive on freedom alone. It requires institutions that teach citizens that not everything permitted is admirable, that life is received rather than wholly self-created, and that liberty carries obligations to others and to the world we inherit.
The challenge now is to recover moral formation without recovering religious domination.
Allen Zeesman
Querétaro, Mexico
David Wolpe responds:
hanks to Allen Zeesman for this thoughtful response. Religion is a force multiplier, and when it is thoughtless or cruelly motivated, it can be destructive. Its greater aims endure, however, and I agree that a self-reckoning is both important and in the very nature of faith.
To the Editor:
retired last year from a career spent in cybersecurity working with the intelligence community and most of the armed services. I therefore agree with much of what Anne Neuberger says on Jews needing to view a badge and a security clearance as forms of kiddush Hashem (a sanctification of God’s name). At the same time, I am disappointed that she does not discuss the fact that so many of those conducting background investigations for government agencies are biased against anyone having a connection to Israel — whether it’s having relatives there visiting (even, say, on Birthright) or any other tie. I myself failed to get certain clearances because of this issue. This dates from way before September 11 and is all owing to the antisemitic diatribe that Jews have dual loyalties.
While I heard through the grapevine of minyanim at the National Security Agency, I found no equivalent elsewhere. Nor, with some exceptions, were there meaningful opportunities for Jewish employees to gather to observe holidays, Yom HaShoah, and other important occasions. If Jews, and especially Orthodox Jews, are to be encouraged to enter government service, they must know that, like any other racial or ethnic group, they will have the chance to demonstrate pride in their faith tradition as well as in what they do for the defense of the United States.
Doron Becker
Potomac, Maryland
Anne Neuberger responds:
thank Doron Becker for his service. I wrote about my own experiences, which have not included the difficult ones he cites in his letter. At the NSA, we had an annual Hanukkah celebration and a Yom HaShoah event (at which I spoke one year). The NSA also moved their family day to Sunday when I noted that Shabbat-observant Jews couldn’t attend family day if it was on Saturday. With that said, I have heard of individuals with connections to Israel who have faced obstacles in getting security clearances. I would note that in certain cases, it’s hard to know whether it comes from a legitimate counterintelligence concern or bias.
I met with Jewish intelligence officers at another intelligence agency who described their challenging experiences as Jews. Their concerns seemed credible to me, and I flagged them for that agency’s leadership at the time. So Mr. Becker’s final point is well taken.