Jewish Identity and Our American Moment

Choosing to be a Jew means that you become vulnerable to a form of bigotry to which you were previously immune; in the process, you may become even more sensitive to all forms of prejudice and discrimination, and more motivated to pursue justice—tzedek—for everyone.

Jews are God’s servants both to return Israel to a covenantal life, but also as a light to the nations of the world.

Since ancient times, in every place they have ever lived, Jews have represented the frightening prospect of freedom. As long as Jews existed in any society, there was evidence that it in fact wasn’t necessary to believe what everyone else believed, that those who disagreed with their neighbors could survive and even flourish against all odds. The J

Fatefully, Jews became ambivalent about themselves. Thus the conflicted modern Jewish identity was born.

Your very existence—both as an individual Jew-by-choice and as part of a historic influx of new Jews—challenges deeply held but unexamined assumptions about Jewish identity and about Jewishness, which is also referred to as Yiddishkeit. For those who understand Jewishness as an ethnicity, converts present an interesting dilemma.

as Jews we have a responsibility to work across the borders of faith and be a blessing to humanity as a whole, seeking neither recognition nor reward.

Ours is not the only way to live, but it is the Jewish way—the particular example that illustrates the general rule that you can be different and yet human, strangers and yet the beloved children of God. I know of no other faith that has taught this principle so clearly, so consistently, so courageously. The

The Jews, therefore, stand right at the center of the perennial attempt to give human life the dignity of a purpose.”7