Judaism Was Never Just a Religion
We are in a stretch of the Jewish calendar that, if you take note, tells us exactly who we are. We have just completed the celebration of Pesach, where we retell the story of leaving Egypt, the moment that transforms a family into a people. We then moved into Yom HaShoah, a day established by the State of Israel to commemorate the Holocaust as a Jewish catastrophe, and then, within days, we will observe and celebrate Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha’Atzmaut, marking sacrifice and independence on behalf of the modern Jewish state. These are different moments, different experiences, different histories, and yet they all point to the same underlying truth. Before anything else, we are a people.
And now we are living through a moment that feels genuinely unsettled, and I believe these uncertain times are asking something of us. The rise in antisemitism, the ugly discourse on campuses, and the disengagement of so many Jews from Jewish communal life are not isolated issues that can be separated or easily addressed. They are all pointing to something deeper, and we owe it to ourselves to take them seriously.
I do not believe the problem is that people don’t care. Most Jews I know care deeply. But for a generation or more, we have not done the work of giving Jewish children, and many Jewish adults, a clear........
