Last month, the Tikvah Fund awarded the Herzl Prize to three of the most influential voices in American Jewry: Dan Senor, Bari Weiss, and Ben Shapiro. During the discussion, the panelists grappled with the future of American Jewish identity, but the most fundamental point emerged only in the final moments, when they were asked a deceptively simple question: How should we raise the next generation of Jewish children?

The answers diverged along predictable lines. For Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, the answer was self-evident: send them to shul, where Judaism is lived primarily as a formal religion. However, for Senor and Weiss, representing the secular wing, the answer was more ambivalent. They astutely recognized that, in the current climate, defining Judaism solely as a religion functions as a strategic antisemitic trap. By stripping Jewish identity of its national and cultural dimensions, contemporary progressivism is able to stigmatize modern Jews – Zionist and non-Zionist alike – as symbols of Western wrongdoing. The result is a narrow and suffocating definition of Jewish identity, one that permits Diaspora Jews to be deemed “good Jews” only so long as they remain religiously privatized and politically passive.

Yet, there is a striking irony in how we respond to this trap. When pressed for a positive vision, even thinkers as bold as Senor and Weiss leaned on familiar, defensive solutions: strengthening the communal “bubble” through Jewish schools and summer camps. It is undeniable that a dedicated Jewish space is essential for identity, but space alone is not a strategy. We must remember that the Shtetl was also a uniquely Jewish space; however, it was a space defined by its........

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