Bari Weiss

Biography

Bari Weiss is an American writer and editor who has worked at The New York Times, Tablet, The Wall Street Journal among other places.

Family- Childhood

Bari Weiss was born on 25th March 1984 to Lou Weiss (Father) and Amy Weiss(Mother), a Jewish couple in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. She was brought up in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh.

Bari's mother Amy Weiss is a department store makeup buyer

Father-

Lou Weiss

Bari's father Lous is a carpet businessman, a conservative by ideology, and has contributed to op-eds in newspapers including 'Journal'. He was the leader of the congregation at the Pittsburgh 'Tree of Life' synagogue there for some time.

Mother- Amy Weiss

Bari's mother Amy is a liberal. Bari was brought up in an open environment where she could learn both sides of the argument and yet have her own opinions different from her parents.

Amy worked for the Kaufmann's Department Store, she used to buy makeup items for them. She later quit her job there and joined husband Lou in the family carpet business.

Siblings

She is one of the 4 daughters of her parents. Four sisters in the order of their ages are:

• Bari Weiss
• Casey Weiss
• Molly Weiss
• Suzy Weiss

Image: Bari Weiss family- Parents (Amy & Lou), sisters- Molly, Casey & Suzy 

The family wasn't brought up very religious, but in touch with their Jewish roots. They would attend synagogue on Yom Kippur and never missed 'Shabbat dinner'

Her parents cultivated a love for writing in her by encouraging her to keep journals, they paid her $5 as a child to read a book and write a review on it. Even when she did something wrong, they would punish her in ways that would help her literary skills positively, by making her write a lengthy apology letter. [3]

Education

• School: She studied at the Pittsburgh's Community Day School 
• Shady Side Academy: She studied at the Shady Side Academy, an independent prep school in suburban Pittsburgh.
• High school: She was a student council president at high school. [3]
• Columbia University: She graduated from Columbia University in 2007

Marriage- Relationships

Bari Weiss & Jason Kass

Bari had married Jason Kass, an environmental engineer who founded 'Toilets for people' (the company designs waterless and cheap toilets, it makes toilets affordable in the developing world) in 2013.

Bari Weiss & Kate McKinnon

Bari and her fellow Columbian student Kate McKinnon had an on and off relationship going for some time.

Kate McKinnon is an actress who is popular for her impersonations of the likes of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Jeff Sessions, Kellyanne Conway and others on 'Saturday Night Live'. The two remain friends.

 Facts & Trivia

• Bari, the name: comes from the name of a local actress, if not Bari, she would have been named after her grandmother Bertha.
• Wall Street Journal: she was chosen as a Bartley Fellow at the Wall Street Journal in 2007.
• #MeToo Movement: She was critical of the 2018 women's movement, she thinks such a movement was due and needed, but categorizing men as 'toxic and tainted' without due process is unfair and should be treated as not guilty until proven.
• Real-Time with Bill Maher: Bari has been on Bill Maher's popular HBO show multiple times, she mainly talks about the antisemitism in the USA & west and other Jewish issues.
• Political-ideological stand: She identifies herself as a left-leaning centrist.
• Provocateur the Left Loves to Hate: VanityFair called her the 'Provocateur' that Left loves to hate.
• She is skeptical of movement such as Campus Activism, Women's March, #MeToo movement. Though the movements are well-intentioned, she fears that the excessive zeal that the hard left brings in might backfire [3]
• She is against feminists supporting anti-woman practices.
• She has profiled Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren for Wall Street Journal, also play writer David Mamet

Israel Connection

She calls herself a part of Liberal Zionism. She has been to Israel and has spent her time studying and helping people.

Nativ College Leadership Program in Israel:  After her High School years in the USA she took a year gap from the regular studies and attended the Jewish program in Israel for a year.

Dorot Fellowship in Israel(DFI): Bari spent two years after her Graduation in Israel from 2007 to 2008

She helped build a clinic for Bedouin people (nomadic Arabs) in the Negev desert. She studied at a yeshiva and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She studied musical theater at the university.

She has been critical of Bibi Nethanyahu's govt. policies in Israel.

Activism

• Columbia Coalition for Sudan: She founded it in reaction to the armed conflict in the Darfur region in Sudan in the 2000s.
• Columbians for Academic Freedom: She co-founded the group 'Columbians for Academic Freedom', it was aimed at liberating the academic environment from the clutches of narrow-minded professors who wanted control over the political narratives. Some professors there were against anyone who was pro-Israel in their political view. She wrote her views in the student paper 'The Columbia Spectator'.

Career

• She worked at the Israeli newspaper 'Haaretz' after her post-graduation, She worked at 'The Forward' the Jewish newspaper for some time.
• 2007-2011: She started her career at 'The Wall Street Journal' as baby op-ed editor.
• 2011-2013: Bari worked at Tablet from 2011 to 2013
• 2013-2020: She worked as an associate book review editor at The Wall Street Journal from 2013 to 2017
• 2017-2020: She worked at 'The New York Times' from 2017, till 2020 until her resignation in July 2020. She worked as an op-ed editor about culture and politics.
• Bari Weiss's works can be accessed at her author pages here- The New York Times, Wallstreet Journal

Resignation from New York Times Opinion post

Bari resigned from her job as a New York Times columnist through a letter, she cites "Bullying by the colleagues" and "Illiberal environment" as the reasons for resignation.

Speaking of the work environment, the mindset of her former colleagues, she said: "... of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people." [2]

In her critical letter, she compared the New York Times to Twitter in their catering to the outraging industry, "Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions... If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of digital Thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets."

Harper's open Letter

Bari supported the 'Letter on Justice and Open Debate' published on Harper's and signed by leftist-liberal intellectuals criticizing the cancel culture, intolerance, and stifling of freedom of expression in general on the liberal side.

The letter was signed by writers, intellectuals  and media personalities like Noam Chomsky, J.K. Rowling, Garry Kasparov, Steven Pinker,  Fareed Zakaria, Gloria Steinem, and others

Women's March

She was moved by the Women’s March of 2017, she felt it was a necessary response to Donald Trumps' attack "against the weakest and most vulnerable" sections of the society.

She, however, was concerned that two of the top four leaders were appreciative of antisemites like Louis Farrakhan. The movement saw splits along the lines Bari had cautioned.

She wrote an opinion piece titled "The Limits of 'Believe All Women'" where she cautioned that believing all women might turn out to be counterproductive to the future of the movement. [3]

Campus Activism

Bari is skeptical of the campus activism, she is of the opinion that it is being used carelessly sometimes by the students to tar their professors as fascists. [3]

Cultural Appropriation

In her opinion, "cultural appropriation" cries are "un-American". A world without cultural exchanges is a "pleasureless, gray world” in her opinion. She is fo the opinion that everything good about America comes from the mixing of cultures. According to her, to oppose cultural mixing would be to restrict people to the lanes of their birth. [3]

The Tree of Life Synagogue

Bari was a frequent visitor to 'The Tree of Life Synagogue', she had her Bat Mitzvah there. After the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting at her synagogue, she talked about it on Bill Maher's show. She personally knew many of the victims of the incident. 

She criticized the 'Right-wing' Jews that supported Donald Trump:

"I hope this week that American Jews have woken up to the price of that bargain. They have traded policies that they like for the values that have sustained the Jewish people and frankly this country for forever: welcoming the stranger, dignity for all human beings, equality under the law, respect for dissent, love of truth. These are the things that we’re losing under this president. And no policy is worth that price"

How to Fight Anti-Semitism

[How to Fight Anti-Semitism- Bari Weiss]

Bari published the book in 2019 to discuss anti-Semitism in the USA. Antisemitism used to be prominent only in the Middle East and to some extent in Europe. In the United States, it was limited to the hard-right factions. Now with far-left joining the group of antisemites, antisemitism seems an inevitable possibility even in the USA. Bari discusses the problems and possible solutions in the book.

Quotes

• Anti-Semitism is not just a prejudice, it is a conspiracy theory, it says a secret hand is controlling the world and that secret hand is called 'the Jew'
• I don't believe Trump is an antisemite, but he is inculcating an atmosphere of conspiracy-minded thinking, he says things like 'Enemies of people', 'Globalists'. When Right win extremists hear that, all they think is 'Jew, Jew, Jew'
• [About Jewish love for Trump] Some American Jews have traded the policies that they like for the values that have sustained the Jewish people in the USA.
• I thought America was an exception, we have always had religious freedoms in America, that fact that what happens in Europe could be coming to the USA is concerning.
• The Far-right says Jews aren't White and Christian, The far-Left says Jews are not victim enough, the Jews have no place in American politics at the time.
• According to the left, Among all the flawed states in the world- Syria, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China; Only one state doesn't have the right to exist, and that is the Jewish state.
• 25% millennials think asking someone for a drink is sexual harassment, if that is sexual harassment then touching someone is sexual assault and kissing someone is rape, if that is the case, then we have lost, words don't mean anything
• I went to a college that said gender is a social construct, nature doesn't matter, that there is really no difference between men and women, I think that is a lie 'sexual revolution' sold to women, the time has come to revisit the sexual revolution.
• All of our sexual conversation (these days) is about consent and pain, whatever happened to intimacy, love, and romance? wouldn't it be amazing if that was our conversation?
• I think it is really important to think about things issue by issue then be like 'yup I sign up for whole list'
• We read the same Torah; we say the same prayers. The Western Wall is not theirs. It belongs to all of the Jewish people.
• The question of gender difference has become so 3rd wave taboo that no one is allowed to touch it, you just have to parrot the line that gender is a social construct.
• (About alt-left movements in the educational institutions) It is an attempt to sideline extremely reasonable ideas, ideas that were considered liberal libertarian a few years ago. To label conservatives as fascists dramatically limit the discourse and freedom of speech and thought
• Teachers are treating the students in universities as if they are their baby sitters. Universities used to be and are supposed to be a sacred place in the pursuit of truth, increasingly it seems that they are in the business of churning out SJWs
• [About her experience of working at the New York Times, in her resignation paper] Nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back. [2]
• [About the role of newspapers] Is our job to be a warm bath and ideological safe space for people who we think are our readers? Or is it our job to show them the scope of opinions, legitimate opinions, that people all over this country have? [3]
• I hate bullies. In college, I protested bullying professors who used their classrooms to promote propaganda and to silence opposing views [3]

References

1. Bari Weiss wiki
2. Bari Weiss reigns from New York Times
3. Vanity fair interview