Futurizing the Jews : Alternative Futures for Meaningful Jewish Existence in the 21st Century

Rating:
Summary: Will the Jews last?
Review: Futurizing the Jews: Alternative Futures for Meaningful Jewish Existence in the 21st Century

Anti-Semitism is rising and the Jews are disappearing at an accelerating rate, with the median age of American Jewry at over 45-10 to 20 years older than other American norms-and interfaith marriage now a routine affair. Unless the advantages of being Jewish are increased, this trend will continue unabated until a 4,000-year-old history comes to a close by the end of the 21st. century.

The erudite authors, of Futurizing the Jews: Alternative Futures for Meaningful Jewish Existence in the 21st Century, Tsvi Bisk and Moshe Dror, examine this trend from an historic to a current political and economic perspective and offer creative and enlightened ways and means to take advantage of contemporary and futuristic technology to create more a meaningful Jewish identity and support system.

In the context of a metamorphic paradigm for the expression of the Jewish concept tikkun olam (healing the world), possible alliances with environmentalists and educators, who in one form or another share this purpose, are proposed. The authors counsel, "... Jews who do not believe in a transcendent, supernatural god ...can aspire to a rich spiritual life within the Jewish tradition."

Bisk and Dror believe that liberal acceptance and uncritical ecumenism-referred to here as "the New Age bromide all 'religions' are really the same," are the greatest current threat to the Jewish people, a threat even greater than growing anti-Semitism.

They present their fascinating and thought-provoking account of the the real bottom-line differences in values that still exist between the secular (non-believing Jew) and the rest of society, Zionism not withstanding. "...A Jew cannot have a personal relationship with god, because god is not a person." Admittedly, they had me, a traditionally resistant student of this sort of examination, taking an informal first-hand survey of the people I know, to see if their points hit the mark. I'm still at it.

Why is a Jewish atheist who eats pork on Yom Kippur still regarded as a Jew while a Jew for Jesus who keeps kosher and lays tefillin, is not? What defines a Jew? Are they a people who share a common gene pool, a religion, a history? Are you still a Jew, if you do not believe in a god that answers prayers and intervenes in human affairs? Can you legitimately call yourself a Jew if you are an atheist or an agnostic? Is the threat of anti-Semitism enough to motivate you to nostalgically keep up Jewish traditions in which you do not believe and thereby keep the religion from disappearing? For the secular Jew, the non-believer, what does the basic desire to find meaning and purpose and to live an integrated life have to do with Jewish identity?

"Cyberspace represents an evolutionary development of human consciousness into omniconsciousness-a new transpersonal level of human awareness. This requires new concepts of community and interactivity...." After you read this bracing book, fire away. Perhaps, in cyber-zionism-Talmudic tradition, you will record your opinion here at amazon.com? I would welcome hearing more on this provocative book and the topic it addresses, the vanishing Jew .