On ‘Jewish Money’ in American Politics

By Seth Mandel

Wednesday, May 20, 2026

 

The biggest loser of yesterday’s primaries, Tom Massie, accepted his defeat with precisely the class and honor one would expect of him: none. He blamed the Jews, of course. Specifically, Jewish money.

 

Indeed, Massie finds Jewish money—that is, Jewish participation in the political process—so distasteful that he effectively moved to outlaw it last week with a bill targeting AIPAC by name. Since AIPAC is an American organization, and the rest of Congress isn’t comprised of bearded wannabe Putins, a bill categorizing Jews as foreign agents won’t be passed into law any time soon.

 

Massie’s real point, instead, was to shame Jews into forfeiting their democratic political rights. It is the same goal that the AOC-led “squad” and their groupies, like Massie’s good friend and Democratic congressman Ro Khanna, seek.

 

The attempt to make Jews in America self-conscious about their money is a smart tactic, because it hides its true target: Jewish inclusion in society.

 

And so American Jews should know what’s at stake for Jews and for America.

 

In 1934, Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky addressed an American delegation about fundraising for development in Palestine. Here is what he said regarding the dismissiveness with which some treated the financial contributions of Jews who remained in the Diaspora:

 

We prosaically call it ‘money’. The common Jew did not steal his money and did not pick it up from the streets. In most cases he did not inherit it from his father or a rich uncle. He earned this money by hard work and sharp wits; sometimes also with drops of his blood, carrying within him the bitterness of anguish and degradation, products of his fight for existence and of just being able to stay alive in the atmosphere of the Diaspora. The Jew’s money is in fact crystallized tears. The Jewish dollar is nothing else but a promissory note from the Almighty for a day’s back-breaking labor.

 

In today’s politics, left-wing progressives and an increasing number of right-wing populists deny the legitimacy of everyone’s money except their own. So it should not be shocking that, given the same cohorts’ rising anti-Zionism, they would like “Jewish money” to be solely a term of abuse.

 

But in fact the money that Americans earn from their work is not illegitimate. The money they use to put food on the table for their families is food. The money with which they build a roof over their heads is shelter. The money with which they send their children to school is education.

 

Nor is the work they do to make that money illegitimate. Since the attacks of October 7, 2023, and the explosion of societal anti-Semitism that came with it, we have been talking a great deal about the way anti-Semites are trying to drive Jews from public life and the public square. That includes the way the country’s elite universities have increased their discrimination against Jewish students, as have law schools and medical schools and other graduate programs galore. The idea is to unofficially but materially bar the Jew from a whole assortment of mainstream professions.

 

In this atmosphere, we take Jabotinsky’s words to heart: “Jewish money” is the result of Jews being forced to swim against cultural currents. It is the result of overcoming odds—not, perhaps, odds quite as stark as Jews have faced in other places and at other times, but undeniable odds nonetheless. The meaning of every dollar earned is the overcoming of whatever roadblocks were put in front of the earner. The money itself is just paper, a symbol.

 

I’d like to quote what Jabotinsky said next, to widen the scope a bit:

 

The principle of national contribution has no relation to the question whether it is possible or impossible to ‘build the country by donations’. I, for example, personally think that it is impossible, to which all or most people concur. But what is the connection between the two? Indeed, a country is primarily developed with the assistance of private capital. However, there are a number of spheres within the developmental process which cannot be achieved by private means without a national fund. And if someone finds this gratifying by calling it ‘donating’, let it be so.

 

Jabotinsky is talking about building the institutions of a Jewish state. But he might as well also be talking about America. Should Jews be ashamed of all that has been built with “Jewish money?” If not, then neither should they be ashamed of the free political speech it funds. “Money” and “democracy” aren’t dirty words.