This review of Leifer’s challenging work raises many painful questions about how we who have a Jewish heritage can balance our affection and identity with Israel and its current slaughter in Gaza. Do we balance the 42,000 dead Palestinians against the 6 million Holocaust fatalities vowing “Never Again?” How do we handle the wellspring of antisemitism that has laid just below the surface all these years? Might those like me who deserted adherence to Judaism because of the God thing still consider ourselves culturally Jewish? Somehow I have that nagging feeling that like the British being on the wrong side of history when following WWII they used their governing mandate over Palestine to frustrate the will of the Jewish people, Israel is now on the wrong side of history in its attempt to frustrate a Palestinian state.
As for the future of Jews in America, there will always be a cohort even if smaller of the religious and the culturally familiar.
I agree, Marvin, with your conclusions. Israel's excesses raise searing questions about Jewish ethnics and Jewish identity. Israel has become a red state, and non-Orthodox American Jewry, a blue state, with conflicting ethical and political values and perspectives... a painful divide.
Joe, Without stepping into the discussion of Zionism and Nationalism I wonder how is it that a child can be born with assumptions about their beliefs rather than being raised free to choose? The discussion leaves out the impact of scientific knowledge gained in the last 150 years on faith.
I don't see how people are born with any assumptions. But assuredly they absorb values and beliefs from the endowments of the parents, larger family, and the ethnic and religious communities they are born into. These endowments serve as the bases out of which people make choices to modify what they have inherited and to mold their characters. Parents who are believers have every right to raise children according to their own religious convictions, though as people mature they need to claim the right to accept, modify, amend, or reject as those beliefs in line with what seems compelling to them. As mentioned in my essay, an omission in Leifer's reflections is discussion as to how he justifies his beliefs. I suspect as a graduate of the Bergen County Academies, the premier science school in the area, if not the state, and of Princeton University, he is not naive to the conflicts of religious belief and the scientific world view. But, he is no doubt, not the first person to conclude that he has been able to reconcile the two.
This review of Leifer’s challenging work raises many painful questions about how we who have a Jewish heritage can balance our affection and identity with Israel and its current slaughter in Gaza. Do we balance the 42,000 dead Palestinians against the 6 million Holocaust fatalities vowing “Never Again?” How do we handle the wellspring of antisemitism that has laid just below the surface all these years? Might those like me who deserted adherence to Judaism because of the God thing still consider ourselves culturally Jewish? Somehow I have that nagging feeling that like the British being on the wrong side of history when following WWII they used their governing mandate over Palestine to frustrate the will of the Jewish people, Israel is now on the wrong side of history in its attempt to frustrate a Palestinian state.
As for the future of Jews in America, there will always be a cohort even if smaller of the religious and the culturally familiar.
I agree, Marvin, with your conclusions. Israel's excesses raise searing questions about Jewish ethnics and Jewish identity. Israel has become a red state, and non-Orthodox American Jewry, a blue state, with conflicting ethical and political values and perspectives... a painful divide.
provocative article- food for much thought. Thank you so much
You are much welcome, Rhoda.
Joe, Without stepping into the discussion of Zionism and Nationalism I wonder how is it that a child can be born with assumptions about their beliefs rather than being raised free to choose? The discussion leaves out the impact of scientific knowledge gained in the last 150 years on faith.
I don't see how people are born with any assumptions. But assuredly they absorb values and beliefs from the endowments of the parents, larger family, and the ethnic and religious communities they are born into. These endowments serve as the bases out of which people make choices to modify what they have inherited and to mold their characters. Parents who are believers have every right to raise children according to their own religious convictions, though as people mature they need to claim the right to accept, modify, amend, or reject as those beliefs in line with what seems compelling to them. As mentioned in my essay, an omission in Leifer's reflections is discussion as to how he justifies his beliefs. I suspect as a graduate of the Bergen County Academies, the premier science school in the area, if not the state, and of Princeton University, he is not naive to the conflicts of religious belief and the scientific world view. But, he is no doubt, not the first person to conclude that he has been able to reconcile the two.