The most obvious and immediate to me is the question of who controls and decides Israel’s path. I think that an Israel in thrall to messianic belief is a danger to both its own existence and to Jews worldwide. But having recently been back to NYC (my own homeland), and wandering through a Hasidic neighborhood, it really began to hit me h…
The most obvious and immediate to me is the question of who controls and decides Israel’s path. I think that an Israel in thrall to messianic belief is a danger to both its own existence and to Jews worldwide. But having recently been back to NYC (my own homeland), and wandering through a Hasidic neighborhood, it really began to hit me how separate the world they (and their children, so many children) inhabit is from reality. And as someone who has spent my career in public policy, not religion (I used to quip that the next time I walked into a synagogue, the arc would burst into flames), what it means and can mean when people (any people) who are trying to bring their mythology into time get to dictate their false reality to others. And how history is littered with the tragedies that can bring.
Do Jews with those sorts of views really have much influence, though? Seems to me like they’re a pretty small minority of the total Jewish population.
Not in Brooklyn (though they actually have more political power in the city than you’d think). And that lack of influence, over centuries, of small and relatively insular enclaves of Jews is lulling. Who cares what they want to believe? What difference does it make? But currently, it seems that messianics do have considerable sway over the Netanyahu government, and suddenly their visions and priorities are impacting a whole lot of people’s lives.
I hear where you're coming from. I suppose as a non-Jew working in the Zionist activist space my inclination is to generally let Jews debate where along the secular to fundamentalist scale is best to fall, whether Reform is better than Orthodox, which forms of Hasidism may be benign while others that could be harmful, which Jews are so secular that they shouldn't even count as Jews, etc.
My main concern right now is the rising antisemitism which targets all Jews. And it seems like to counter that, Jews and non-Jews from secular to fundamentalist should try to come together and bring their unique perspectives to figuring out how we can defeat the antisemites and authoritarians.
The most obvious and immediate to me is the question of who controls and decides Israel’s path. I think that an Israel in thrall to messianic belief is a danger to both its own existence and to Jews worldwide. But having recently been back to NYC (my own homeland), and wandering through a Hasidic neighborhood, it really began to hit me how separate the world they (and their children, so many children) inhabit is from reality. And as someone who has spent my career in public policy, not religion (I used to quip that the next time I walked into a synagogue, the arc would burst into flames), what it means and can mean when people (any people) who are trying to bring their mythology into time get to dictate their false reality to others. And how history is littered with the tragedies that can bring.
Do Jews with those sorts of views really have much influence, though? Seems to me like they’re a pretty small minority of the total Jewish population.
Not in Brooklyn (though they actually have more political power in the city than you’d think). And that lack of influence, over centuries, of small and relatively insular enclaves of Jews is lulling. Who cares what they want to believe? What difference does it make? But currently, it seems that messianics do have considerable sway over the Netanyahu government, and suddenly their visions and priorities are impacting a whole lot of people’s lives.
I hear where you're coming from. I suppose as a non-Jew working in the Zionist activist space my inclination is to generally let Jews debate where along the secular to fundamentalist scale is best to fall, whether Reform is better than Orthodox, which forms of Hasidism may be benign while others that could be harmful, which Jews are so secular that they shouldn't even count as Jews, etc.
My main concern right now is the rising antisemitism which targets all Jews. And it seems like to counter that, Jews and non-Jews from secular to fundamentalist should try to come together and bring their unique perspectives to figuring out how we can defeat the antisemites and authoritarians.