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“Secular Americans are largely ignorant about religion, but, in surveys, religious Americans turn out to be scarcely more knowledgeable”

Secular Americans are largely ignorant about religion, but, in surveys, religious Americans turn out to be scarcely more knowledgeable.

“Americans are both deeply religious and profoundly ignorant about religion,” Stephen Prothero noted in his book, “Religious Literacy.” “Atheists may be as rare in America as Jesus-loving politicians are in Europe, but here faith is almost entirely devoid of content. One of the most religious countries on earth is also a nation of religious illiterates.”

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they believe that the Bible holds the answer to all or most of life’s basic questions. Yet only one-third know that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and 10 percent think that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.

Many Americans know even less about other faiths, from Islam to Hinduism.

Nicholas Kristof, “Religion for $1000, Alex”, The New York Times (27 April 2014), SR11.

“to be Jewishly educated today, he or she must know the history of the past 300 years”

Given what we now know about this pervasive sense among secular Jews, it is time to invest more seriously in educational endeavors that reinforce it and build upon it. Simply put, for a Jew to be Jewishly educated today, he or she must know the history of the past 300 years. We must learn and understand our achievements, and explore the background and basis of our success. Was it DNA? Social cues? Pressure from persecution? Education? We need to educate more thoroughly in this area than we have in the past.

Michael Steinhardt, “The 94 Percent”, eJewish Philanthropy (24 June 2014) {http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/the-94-percent}

“In our new entertainment landscape, …the concept of the bargain bin…has been rendered obsolete”

In our new entertainment landscape, in which the dominant cultural forces are Netflix (for movies), its siblings like Hulu and HBO Go (for TV), Spotify (for music) and Amazon (for books and e-books), the concept of the bargain bin — a place where you could buy the cultural equivalent of ephemera, books and movies and music that had been judged too something to be worth full price — has been rendered obsolete.

In its place are three phenomena of the web. First, the existentially stultifying depth of the Netflix catalog and the back corridors of YouTube, places where you can encounter mysteries and marginalia so stupid and weird and amateurish that they make “Robot Monster” look like “Dr. Strangelove,” some of these delivered by the very algorithms designed to help you find “new” things to watch. Second, the phenomenon of videos spread virally, passed hand to online hand by people on Twitter and Facebook and Reddit and message boards. And third, the targeted schlock of Asylum Entertainment and its ilk, movies like “Atlantic Rim” that are whole-cloth rip-offs with deceptive titles designed to be watched inadvertently.

What’s changed, then, isn’t so much the stuff of the bargain bin, the art that rewards us with its ineptitude and obscurity. Instead, it’s the method of the discovery itself. In recent years, much of the meta-discussion over the state of the Internet has revolved around the messy word “curation,” which before the last decade or so mostly called to mind the arena of the art museum. Now it’s used when we talk about web influencers, people with followings who can single-handedly discover a video and give it life with a tweet or a blog post. It also refers to the gaggle of critics at sites like Pitchfork or Rotten Tomatoes who, in the slurry of content the Internet presents, happen to be the ones with the practical ability to carve out something resembling a quorum.

We, as in the public, are beholden to these people to some extent, because like Dante descending into hell, we need a Virgil to guide us through the terrors that are YouTube and worse (on the Internet, there’s always worse). There has been a severe hamstringing of our agency not only as consumers of art, but also as patrons. What we’ve made up for in efficiency, we’ve lost in potential, and that loss of potential — the feeling that boundaries exist on the artistic world — is immensely dissatisfying. We are becoming increasingly tethered to these algorithms and these influencers, and for a reason: What we’ve created, with the advent of almost unlimited access, is as close as the human race has ever come to the elimination of scarcity. There is still a cap on the amount of movies and TV and music out there waiting for us. But like the edges of space, it is something we’re never going to see.

Kevin Lincoln, “The Death of the Bargain Bin”, The New York Times Magazine (16 March 2014), 51.

“Compromise and consensus frequently governed choices” for Conservative synagogues in the mid-20th century with Consequences

In the middle of the last century, the Conservative movement made the decision to become the “Movement of the People.” Conservative synagogues opened their doors and welcomed a broad base of Jews who were seeking to identify with a congregation that blended tradition and modernity. Although the Conservative movement had a distinct theological and ideological approach, it was not theology or ideology that motivated most adherents. It was, rather, the “style” of the religious services and programs that generated enthusiasm. In order to make themselves attractive to the widest possible segment of the community, many congregations made an implicit decision not to define themselves too precisely. The prevailing attitude reflected the belief that every Jew should be able to find something within the congregation with which he or she felt comfortable. More significantly, however, the premise that reigned was that as few members as possible would feel uncomfortable. Rarely was there an attempt to define the synagogue vision, mission, ideology or approach to religious life too specifically for fear of causing people to feel excluded.

As a result, leaders often made decisions based upon programs or positions that had the potential to attract the greatest numbers. Compromise and consensus frequently governed choices. Those who were satisfied with this approach retained their membership, whether or not they actively participated in congregational life. Those who wanted that which Conservative Jewish ideology promised but often did not deliver, however, went elsewhere. Ironically, many adults who have studied traditional Jewish sources and were moved to seek a serious Jewish community, committed to what Conservative Judaism promoted in terms of Jewish living, were forced to find it outside of the movement.

Rabbi Jerome Epstein, “Key to Conservative Survival: Returning to Our Core”, The Jewish Week (18 April 2014), 20.

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Considering the failure of acknowledging Patrilineal Descent for the Reform Movement

In 1983, the Reform Movement made the decision to grant any child born of a Jewish father automatic membership in the Jewish People, a policy otherwise known as patrilineal descent. Indeed, the decision of the Central Conference of American Rabbis was truly radical: it “transformed the halachic formulation of ‘the child of a Jewish mother’ to the ‘chile of a Jewish parent’” in delineating the transmission of Jewishness from one generation to the next; moreover, it stipulated that no child, whether born of a Jewish father or mother, was officially Jewish until he/she complete a bar/bat mitzvah or engaged in public acts or ceremonies of Jewishness. The impact was immediate: conversions to Judaism dropped by 75%. Following the patrilineal descent decision, only 5% of non-Jewish fiancé(e)s in prospective intermarriages converted to Judaism. The ancient Jewish club now had some members who did not recognize other club member, creating confusion. Worse still, the overwhelming majority of those granted this new club membership threw away their membership cards. As a result, membership in the Jewish club has been profoundly devalued.
Though the Reform Movement instituted patrilineal descent as a means to combat the problem of poor Jewish identity among children of intermarriage, the result has been the exact opposite. Among the 30% of mixed marriages who are raised as Jews, the vast majority had Jewish mothers. Even when the Jewish parent desires to raise the children as Jews, this is only likely to happen when the Jewish parent is a woman. This may seem surprising since the child of a Jewish father most often carries the father’s name and is frequently assumed to be Jewish by acquaintances. Nevertheless, the factual evidence is clear: whether by virtue of genes, tradition or culture, Jewish mothers are much more effective at transmitting Judaism to their children than Jewish fathers even if they so desire.

Scott A. Shay, Getting Our Groove Back: How to Energize American Jewry, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem & New York: Devora Publishing, 2008), 155.

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“‘I work a lot with stay-at-home dads and men who work from home,’ he said, ‘and one thing I hear a lot is that, in theory, they’re really happy balancing flexible work with stay-at-home responsibilities…'”

Ian Kerner, a sexuality counselor and the author of “She Comes First,” sees couples struggle to find a ratio that works. “I work a lot with stay-at-home dads and men who work from home,” he said, “and one thing I hear a lot is that, in theory, they’re really happy balancing flexible work with stay-at-home responsibilities, while their wives are out working full-time in corporate jobs. But, at the same time, a common complaint is that Mom comes home and feels guilty for being away all day, and so much time has to be made up connecting with the children, who take first priority, that these dads feel lost in the mix.” In many couples, Kerner says, the wives start to feel disgruntled because their husbands get to see more of the kids, and the husbands, whose wives are controlling more of the spending, start to feel “financially emasculated.” Sometimes, he says, a vicious cycle begins: The husband feels marginalized and less self-confident, which causes the wife to lose respect for and desexualize him. Under these circumstances, neither is particularly interested in sex with the other.

Lori Gottlieb, “The Egalitarian-Marriage Conundrum”, The New York Times Magazine (9 February 2014), 33.

“Gender is no longer simply code for women or the feminine and its scholarship is no longer the province of females or even self-declared feminist”

Gender is no longer simply code for women or the feminine and its scholarship is no longer the province of females or even self-declared feminists. Indeed, gender has become a rather notably ambiguous signifier. Where this is acknowledged rather than covered over by tidy definitions, the ambiguity that attends the term is rendered productive, I believe.

Virginia Burrus, “Mapping as Metamorphosis: Initial Reflections on Gender and Ancient Religious Discourses”, in Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses, ed. Todd Penner & Caroline Vander Stichele (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2007), 2.

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“Orthodox rabbis rarely made any comments on the events unfolding on the American scene in the 1920s or early 1930s”

…Orthodox rabbis rarely made any comments on the events unfolding on the American scene in the 1920s or early 1930s. They generally ignored race, immigration, pacifism, isolationism, the League of Nations, lynching, Sacco and Vanzetti, civil liberties, the Klan, racial segregation, industrial (textile, railroad) strikes, Einstein’s theory of relativity, modern technology, modern war, Prohibition, economic warfare, Bolshevism, political events in Europe, and the Depression. Only with the rise of the Nazis and the 1939 White Paper that drastically curtailed Jewish immigration to Palestine, did European events become part of their sermons. Instead, they talked about Torah (which, all Orthodox rabbis agreed, God had revealed verbally to Moses at Mt. Sinai), commandments (“word of God,” they all agreed), ceremonies, customs, observances, rituals, holidays, festivals, and themes associated with the calendrical events in the Jewish/Judaic year. The scientific and philosophical literature of their day was useful primarily to support the conclusions of Judaic values and beliefs.

Marc Lee Raphael, The Synagogue in America: A Short History (New York & London: New York University Press, 2011), 90.

“Mapping, whether viewed from the perspective of cartography mathematics or cognitive science, is an act of translation—or, perhaps better yet, of transformation”

Mapping, whether viewed from the perspective of cartography mathematics or cognitive science, is an act of translation—or, perhaps better yet, of transformation. A mapping constructs a relationship between two domains (sometimes referred to by theorists of conceptual metaphors as the “source” and the “target”); put differently, it generates a second codomain (as mathematicians name it) out of the potentialities of an originary domain, by establishing the conditions for metamorphosis. Mapping is, then, an inherently creative process, giving rise to novel entities and insights. Precisely to the extent that the map becomes the territory, mapping generates whole new worlds of image, symbol or text.

Virginia Burrus, “Mapping as Metamorphosis: Initial Reflections on Gender and Ancient Religious Discourses”, in Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses, ed. Todd Penner & Caroline Vander Stichele (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2007), 1.

“At one time, it was deemed a good thing to have many Jewish organizations…”

At one time, it was deemed a good thing to have many Jewish organizations, as that meant, it was said, that more Jews would be involved in Jewish life. The trouble with that theory is that organizations chew up money and, even when they no longer have much relevance, they never die. The paid professionals see to that.

Edgar M. Bronfman and Beth Zasloff, Hope, Not Fear: A Path to Jewish Renaissance (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008), 174.