Sublime

“The Orthodox Jewish community is third world in theology and philosophy. Having a political state of Israel now, I’m convinced the great religious challenge is going to be the pluralist issue. Each culture can no longer present itself as self-evident.”

had actually been opposed to the idea of the creation of a Jewish state. The American Council for Judaism, then a national American Jewish organization, existed primarily to argue against the creation of the state; it not only engaged in virulent anti-Zionist propaganda, but also helped Arab spokespeople prepare their speeches at the United Nations

“To speak as a Jew is to quote … [and] to quote is to see the present through the prism of tradition.”

opening fire in a synagogue outside San Diego, killing a sixty-year-old congregant

A Chinese man in the congregation springs to his feet, whipping out a shofar, a ram’s horn. In a synagogue, a rabbi solemnly blows the shofar on holy occasions, producing a few mournful bleats. This Chinese man is somehow blasting out ‘Hava Nagila’ like he’s Charlie Parker.

his native Lithuanian shtetl, Ponievezh, was among the many Jewish towns forcibly evacuated during the First World War, catapulting him and hundreds of thousands of other Jewish refugees into modernity.

In an age of death and destruction, Rabbi Yohanan taught that a fundamental religious response was to increase loving-kindness and multiply life itself.

To make a true sea change in American Jewish life, we need to foster an entire generation of Empowered Jews.