“What comes next?” is an all day forum on “the Jewish future” to be staged by the Jewish Review of Books in October in New York at the august Center for Jewish History. And look at the roster: the average age is Pushing Methusaleh. Henry Kissinger (92), Elliott Abrams (67), Ruth Wisse (79), Joseph Lieberman (73), Dennis Ross (66). And before you call me ageist, I’m speaking as a 60-year-old who wants to hear from young people about the Jewish future, not oldtimers who we’ve heard a million times. Lieberman, Ross, Abrams and Wisse are all of Tired Zionism school. Roger Hertog is a moneybags Zionist.
And the ticket price: $360! When Elliott Abrams and Dennis Ross are willing to bore most audiences for nothing.
We know what these people’s vision of the future is going to be: Wisse will say that young American Jews have to be Israel’s army in the United States. She said that on the CJH stage a few years ago. Take the speech out of the mothballs, professor! Abrams will say that Jews must stand apart from the societies they live in except for Israel. That’s no vision.
Rabbi David Wolpe is halfway to the next generation, at 56, but really, why do people who are trying to imagine the Jewish future want to hear these ideas? Help!
Lessons from a Jewish Life in American Politics
Joseph Lieberman in conversation with Eric Cohen
The United States and Israel: The Future of a RelationshipA discussion with Elliott Abrams and Dennis Ross, moderated by Jay Lefkowitz
What Modern Jewish Classics Can Still Teach UsTextual study with master teachers Leora Batnitzky and Ruth R. Wisse
Israel, Iran, and the New Middle East: A Strategic AssessmentHenry Kissinger in conversation with Roger Hertog
The advanced age of these guys should be viewed as a positive. All the birthright trips and campus recruiting in the world will never produce the kind of paranoid zealotry of these older heads. Supporting Israel at any cost may be part of THEIR DNA but successive generations are seeing through this.
RE: “Henry Kissinger (92), Elliott Abrams (67), Ruth Wisse (79), Joseph Lieberman (73)”
MY COMMENT: Henry Kissinger never looked so good (compared to the others)! ! !
This event is superflous. If you want a free education on the Jewish future in America just read Pew’s report from 2013.
It’s quite a few pages but it speaks of a trend that has been going on for decades and will continue in the future; a very affluent, safe and comfortable community with a small but growing Orthodox population.
Highly assimilated, highly successful and with high levels of pride in its identity.
The “crisis” is so real.
I agree; it’s a little irrelevant. But for the record, Meir Soloveitchik is 38, and an extremely important voice in the Modern Orthodox community, and Leora Batnitsky is a tenured religion professor at Princeton and graduated from Columbia in 1988, so I’m guessing she’s under 50.
The truth of the matter is that for conservative outlets like JRB, the highly-assimilated voices of young Jews don’t matter a whole lot to the Jewish future, because with a 70% intermarriage rate and little will on the part of assimilated young Jews to give their children a Jewish education, there really won’t be very many Jews among them in a couple of generations. I think that that’s sad, but perhaps that’s part of your goal; for Judaism to evaporate into melting pot. I remember that years ago, when Alex Cockburn launched his ridiculous book on the politics of antisemitism at NYU, Lenni Brenner talked about how assimilation would thin out the Jewish population in the United States, and the whole room erupted in applause.
About the “ridiculous book launched by Alex Cockburn”, the most informative review at Amazon.com
153 of 198 people found the following review helpful
Putting Things in Perspective
By Joanneva12a on December 16, 2003 (4 stars out of 5)
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
18 various essays from astute writers explore the recent claim that Anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide. Without a doubt it is clear that most of the authors attribute the new claims of anti-Semitism in response to the heightened worldwide awareness and moral criticism of Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza, along with its special nation status the world’s only superpower has bestowed upon it.
The essays are in no way meant to trivialize true anti-Semitism, and the book does not ignore that true anti-Semitism exists.The real thing is explored and deplored in this book, but the focus is on what should constitute true anti-Semitism with what is merely a convenient way to silence anyone who criticizes Israeli policy, thus threatening open debate and democracy.
This is not a book you will just breeze through. I had to read several of the essays multiple times because of the varying philosophical and moral perspectives offered. Some were better than others and made very sound arguments.
A Jewish professor of philosophy inflates the definition of anti-Semitism to include just about anything a philo-Semite could ever hope for, then through a brilliant moral narrative shows us that in doing so, only cheapens and trivializes the real thing.
A BBC journalist wants to know why a certain actor wants to kill him, and why numerous people who engage in factual journalism are suddenly the object of hate mail so vile it far exceeds any crime they are supposedly guilty of.
A SUNY upstate professor pulls the curtain away exposing the myth that the right-wing noise machine speaks for the majority of American Jews and writes that ever increasing Jewish organizations are forming to counter the vocal militant minority that manages to bully not only non-Jews, but moderate and left leaning Jews as well.
A Taayush member in Tel Aviv takes us into a refugee camp in Beit Jalla to remind us what all the fuss is about, lest we start believing that all this supposedly unwarranted and frivolous criticism for humanity’s sake is after all true anti-Semitism.
One essay explores why philo-Semites are no better than anti-Semites, because they hold one group higher in esteem and value than the rest of humanity.
Perhaps the frivolous slur of anti-Semite aimed at legitimate moral criticism of Israeli policy, is no different than the unwarranted slur of “anti-American” or “unpatriotic” that are hurled at people in this country who either question, criticize, or oppose the morality or soundness of the current US administration’s foreign policy. In either case, it is at worst, a blind nationalistic allegiance to a government – right or wrong… and at the very least a departure from thoughtful debate and a sad decline into two-dimensional thinking.
And finally, a former Israeli Knesset member points his finger squarely at the Sharon government calling it “a giant laboratory for growing the anti-Semitism virus” and claims, that with its crimes in the West Bank and Gaza, is the biggest generator of anti-Semitic feelings today, which implicates not only itself, but its entire Jewish population along with it.