Too many people think that the purpose of Jewish journalism is to strengthen Jewish identity. I think the purpose of Jewish journalism is to probe and investigate and analyze Jewish identity. All Jewish life cannot[…]
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Tag: jewish identity
“The problem with the Golden Age of American Zionism was that for far too many Jews, support for Israel became a vicarious faith…”
The problem with the Golden Age of American Zionism was that for far too many Jews, support for Israel became a vicarious faith, a civil religion masking the inadequacies of our actual religion. The only[…]
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“The Internet allows those who deviate from traditional Judaism and who have multiple subcultural identities or labels to have a voice”
The emergence of new Jewish subcultures seems to be growing at a rapid pace due to a greater utilization of online resources. “Outliers” in the Jewish community—that is, individuals who do not fit in the[…]
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“…Ozick, however fierce her identification as a Jew, is admirable in her freedom from identitarian parti pris”
Ozick the channeler of the literary past may seem remote from our present literary debates, dominated as they are by issues of representation, but her work offers a liberating model of engagement with identity. Her[…]
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“Vicarious victimhood has become all too accepted as the organizing category’ of 21st-century Jewish identity”
Vicarious victimhood has become all too accepted as the “organizing category” of 21st-century Jewish identity. There are more problems with that than I can list on this page, but here are a few. First, the[…]
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“We understandably become so preoccupied with Jew hatred…that we’ve forgotten to explore what we actually are”
Anti-Semitism is undeniably on campuses — even at some elementary schools — and along with the subtle and not-so-subtle occurrences comes the obligation to stand up and condemn them, and prevent them from happening again.[…]
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“It is as an individual that I am moved by an anxiety for the meaning of my existence as a Jew”
It is as an individual that I am moved by an anxiety for the meaning of my existence as a Jew. Yet when I begin to ponder about it, my theme is not the problem[…]
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“…for most of the Jewish public in Israel, Jewish identity…is a fundamental, central, and irreplaceable component in any worldview or aspiration for the future”
…unless there is a change of consciousness of Marxist proportions among the Israeli people, the majority of the public will continue to think along ethnic, not class lines. To be clear: for most of the[…]
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“So while many Zionists often relate to the Jewish people as an object with a problem…, I relate to my people as a subject with desires”
I honestly don’t feel myself motivated by Jewish suffering so much as by what the Children of Israel have collectively aspired to for thousands of years. So while many Zionists often relate to the Jewish[…]
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“The aspects of secular Jewish culture that America has embraced are barely Jewish anymore…”
…as Jews have moved fully into the cultural mainstream, it’s become harder to identify things outside of Judaism itself that are exclusively ours. Jon Stewart and Jerry Seinfeld are both Jewish comedians. But they are[…]
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