Иудаизм - настоящий и фальшивый

Америка страна лжи и фантазий. - Махзикей Хадас

p. 258
Platitudes abound. The essence of Judaism, we are told by contemporary scholars, is "love," "salvation," "idealism," "social justice," "Godliness," "social action," "community," "tradition," "repair of the world," and many other vague cliches. ... I recently attended a meeting at the Cambridge Friends School where the essence of the Quaker philosophy was described. I could barely distinguish it from Conservative, Reform, or Reconstructionist Judaism --- though I acknowledge it did not feel exactly the same. The words were similar, but the music was different.

p. 258-259
In a remarkable series of advertisements in the New York Times over the past several years, the American Jewish Committee asked a wide array of Jews, from Elie Wiesel to a prominent money manager to an astronaut to a professional football player to a university president to a senator to a supreme court justice to several students, what "being Jewish means" to them. ... As one put it: "Being Jewish means belonging to the first human community that extolled its own critics." ... But at the end, to each of them "being Jewish" meant being good people, in the ways in which they were good people. ... There were, to be sure, common themes, such as education, justice, peace, and repair of the world, but these themes were general and abstract. Is there any good person today who would not claim to be pursuing these virtues.

p. 277
... a group of politically conservative Jews took out an ad headlined "Mazel Tov, Speaker Gingrich" that claimed to understand "the true nature of Judaism." Not surprisingly, that "true nature" matched the Republican political agenda perfectly. The "timeless Torah values" that constitute the true essence of Judaism, according to this special pleaders, include "fewer government regulations, lower taxes, effective crime fighting," as well as "capital punishment," support for "the military," "personal responsibility," and regarding "wealth as a blessing."

p. 278
Everyone wants to repair the world, to bring it social justice. Read Mein Kampf, or Mao's Little Red Book, or Marx's Kapital, or Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, or Mohammed's Koran, or the Code of Hammurabi, or Confucius's aphorisms, or the Dalai Lama's Five-Point Peace Plan, or thw Contract With America. The argument is not over {\it whether} to repair the broken world, but in what {\it direction} and by which {\it means}. The world is broken, some say, because of too many abortions, too little prayer in the schools, too much homosexuality, too progressive a tax system, too many rights for criminals, too much free speech, too much affirmative action, too many liberals like Leonard Fein and Alan Dershowitz.

p. 282-284 {Diversity}
There is no one Jewish view, or approach, or set of beliefs, any more than there is one American perspective. ... It trivializes the rich diversity of the 3,500-year-old Jewish civilization to reduce it all to a singular, consistent, and always-reconcilable view. ... What is unique about the Jewish tradition is that it has preserved these conflicting views in its authoritative texts, so that future generations have available to them a wide array of approaches to any one issue.

p. 300
I recently attended a class in Jewish learning sponsored by Aish Hatorah, an orthodox outreach group that has had considerable success with college-age Jewish students. Although they have explicitly religious goal, they employ means that are not overtly religious. ... The rabbi started the class by exclaiming, "All right, let's have some fun!"

Выглядело так, что каждая еврейская организация с котором я сталкивался будучи молодым человеком, больше заботилась о сохранении еврейской расы, чем о преподавании иудаизма. As a Jew who cares deeply about his religion, I have come to the conclusion that our great mistake has been to forget that we are the descendants of a loose amalgamation of peoples united around a new idea, and to replace this history with the view, advanced by our enemies, that we are a race. ... Every Jewish institution that I encountered as a young man seemed more dedicated to safeguarding the Jewish race than than to teaching Judaism.

Дуглас Рушков, The New York Times, 20 ноября, 2002 г.