Democracy for the Middle East
November 21, 2002Sulzberger At War
Poor Douglass Rushkoff. With the publication of "the brilliant heir to McLuhan's" well-meaning but misguided editorial about Judaism in The New York Times he has supplied Mr. Sulzberger with a shiny new Gen-X wrapper for the Sulzberger family's century-old war against the survival of the Jewish community. Anyone interested in the roots of the campaign that began with the newspaper's acquisition in 1896 by the son-in-law of Jewish "Reform" leader Isaac Mayer Wise and culminated in the paper's effective cover-up of the Holocaust, should read The Origins of the Modern Jew by Michael A. Meyer, The Jewish State by Yoram Hazoni, and the related DFME posts cited below.
But what of Mr. Rushkoff who has diligently taken 19th century Reformist notions about re-inventing Judaism to their logical and, with all respect, knuckleheaded conclusion? Rabbi Yehuda Amital's analysis of the failings of Jewish education may help explain where Mr. Rushkoff and many other young Jews now find themselves:
Indeed, this solution should not be rejected outright. We can certainly derive from the Torah a very rich and wide-ranging "cultural heritage," but we have to know that the price we pay for this approach is high. The "soul" of Judaism is belief in God. All of its power and loftiness are derived from this fundamental faith. When we try to distill national, esthetic and folkloric elements from within Judaism while ignoring its principal theme, we empty it of its content, and ultimately these "secondary" themes, which drew their strength from the power of our faith, are likewise emptied of meaning and lose their value.
Thus we have paid a price for the attempt to follow this educational route. The first price relates to ourselves: we have accustomed ourselves to using the language more appropriate for an attempt to educate those who are distant from their religious roots. Words such as "God," "Torah," and "mitzvot" have been avoided, while instead we have begun speaking in "cultural" terms - "tradition," "heritage," etc. We also have paid a price from the point of view of our influence externally, in that the secular population that we have tried to educate believes that what it has learned is Judaism in its authentic form.
So what's gonna be with Sulzberger's wunderkind. DMFE will take anyone's bet that the idealistic, curious and.. well irritating Mr. Rushkoff will soon have his fill of celebrity and get himself to a Yeshiva. If he doesn't, it will be our loss .. and his.
[Related: The Times Has A Jewish Problem, The French Are Not A Nation]
Home . Posted by Editor at November 21, 2002 09:23 AM . DFME's new internet address is www.dfme.org