I was otherwise engaged Wednesday evening, so Margot Atwell was kind enough to attend the party Nextbook hosted for Ruth Wisse celebrating the publication of her new book in their “Jewish Encounters” series with Schocken, Jews and Power, and take pictures for the blog. Cynthia Ozick (top row, with Wisse) was one of many literati in what Margot describes as “the attentive, well-heeled group” who gathered to hear Wisse discuss “the problems of Israeli statehood and the virulent anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism that plague the young nation to this day,” and her hope that the book would be a catalyst for finding a solution. “It’s hard to be a Jew in America,” Wisse said, “because you can be anything else as well, so it takes extraordinary dedication” to be a Jew thoroughly and with devotion—but, she quipped, “after the Nextbook series, suddenly, it’s hard not to be a Jew!”
“One thing I found interesting,” Margot writes, “was that, more than once, I heard partygoers mention that this book had been published at ‘exactly the right time.’ One person explained to me that she was referring to the recent publication of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a controversial work by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, expanding on an article they published in the London Review of Books last year, which apparently ‘provoked both howls of outrage and cheers of gratitude for challenging what had been a taboo issue in America: the impact of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy.'”
In the bottom row of the photo, Schocken publicist Stephanie Wilson and publicity director Liz Calamari are joined by editorial director Altie Karper.