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From ‘how to’ to ‘why bother?’: Michael Strassfeld writes a new guide to being Jewish
(JTA) — “What the son wishes to forget the grandson wishes to remember.” That’s known as Hansen’s Law, named for the historian Marcus Lee Hansen, who observed that while the children of immigrants tend to run away from their ethnicity in order to join the mainstream, the third generation often wants to learn the “old ways” of their grandparents.
In 1973, “The Jewish Catalog” turned Hansen’s Law into a “do-it-yourself kit” for young Jews who wanted to practice the traditions of their grandparents but weren’t exactly sure how. Imagine “The Joy of Cooking,” but instead of recipes the guide to Jewish living had friendly instructions for hosting Shabbat, building a sukkah and taking part in Jewish rituals from birth to death. Co-edited by Michael Strassfeld, Sharon Strassfeld and the late Richard Siegel, it went on to sell 300,000 copies and remains in print today.
Fifty years later, Rabbi Michael Strassfeld has written a new book that he calls a “bookend” to “The Jewish Catalog.” If the first book is a Jewish “how to,” the latest asks, he says, “why bother?” “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century” asserts that an open society and egalitarian ethics leave most Jews skeptical of the rituals and beliefs of Jewish tradition. In the face of this resistance, he argues that the purpose of Judaism is not obedience to Torah and its rituals for their own sake or mere “continuity,” but to “encourage and remind us to strive to live a life of compassion, loving relationships, and devotion to our ideals.”
Strassfeld, 73, grew up in an Orthodox home in Boston and got his master’s degree in Jewish studies at Brandeis University. Coming to doubt the “faith claims” of Orthodoxy, he became a regular at nearby Havurat Shalom, an “intentional community” that pioneered the havurah movement’s liberal, hands-on approach to traditional practice. He earned rabbinical ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College when he was 41 and went on to serve as the rabbi of Congregation Ansche Chesed on the Upper West Side and later the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the Manhattan flagship of Reconstructionist Judaism.
“To be disrupted is to experience a break with the past and simultaneously reconnect in a new way to that past,” writes Strassfeld, who retired from the pulpit in 2015. This week, we spoke about why people might find Jewish ritual empty, how he thinks Jewish practices can enrich their lives and how Passover — which begins Wednesday night — could be the key to unlocking the central idea of Judaism.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: I wanted to start with the 50th anniversary of the “Jewish Catalog.” What connects the new book with the work you did back then on the “Catalog,” which was a do-it-yourself guide for Jews who were trying to reclaim the stuff they either did or didn’t learn in Hebrew school?
Michael Strassfeld: I see them as bookends. Basically, I keep on writing the same book over and over again. [Laughs] Except no, I’m different and the world is different. I’m always trying to make Judaism accessible to people. In the “Catalog” I was providing the resources on how to live a Jewish life when the resources weren’t easily accessible.
The new book is less about “how to” than “why bother?” That’s the challenge. I think a lot of people take pride in being Jewish, but it’s a small part of their identity because it doesn’t feel relevant. I want to say to people like that that Judaism is about living a life with meaning and purpose. It’s not about doing what I call the “Jewishly Jewish” things, like keeping kosher and going to synagogue. Judaism is wisdom and practices to live life with meaning and purpose. The purpose of Judaism isn’t to be a good Jew, despite all the surveys that give you 10 points for, you know, lighting Shabbat candles. It’s about being a good person.
So that brings up your relationship to the commandments and mitzvot, the traditional acts and behaviors that an Orthodox Jew or a committed Conservative Jew feels commanded to do, from prayer to keeping kosher to observing the Sabbath and the holidays. They might argue that doing these things is what makes you Jewish, but you’re arguing something different. If someone doesn’t feel bound by these obligations, why do them at all?
I don’t have the faith or beliefs that underlie such an attitude [of obligation]. Halacha, or Jewish law, is not in reality law. It’s really unlike American law where you know that if you’re violating it, you could be prosecuted. What I’m trying to do in the book is reframe rituals as an awareness practice, that is, bringing awareness to various aspects of our lives. So it could be paying attention to food, or cultivating attitudes of gratitude, or generosity, or satisfaction. My broad understanding of the festival cycle, for example, is that you can focus on those attitudes all year long, but the festivals provide a period of time once in the year to really focus on, in the case of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, for example, saying sorry and repairing relationships.
In “Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century,” Michael Strassfeld argues that the challenge of each generation’s Jews is to create the Judaism that is needed in their time. (Ben Yehuda Press)
Passover is coming. Probably no holiday asks its practitioners to do so much stuff in preparation, from cleaning the house of every trace of unleavened food to hosting, in many homes, two different catered seminars on Jewish history. Describe how Passover cultivates awareness, especially of the idea of freedom, which plays an important part thematically in your boo
The Sefat Emet [a 19th-century Hasidic master] says Torah is all about one thing: freedom. But there’s a variety of obstacles in the way. There are temptations. There’s the inner issues that you struggle with, and the bad things that are out of your control. The Sefat Emet says the 613 commandments are 613 etzot, or advice, that teach us how to live a life of freedom. The focus of Passover is trying to free yourself from the chains of the things that hold you back from being the person that you could be, not getting caught up in materiality or envy, free from unnecessary anxieties — all these things that distract us or keep us from being who we could be.
The Passover seder is one of the great rituals of Judaism. We’re trying to do a very ambitious thing by saying, not, like, “let’s remember when our ancestors were freed from Egypt,” but rather that we were slaves in Egypt and we went free. And at the seder we actually ingest that. We experience the bitterness by eating maror, the bitter herb. We experience the freedom by drinking wine. We don’t want it just to be an intellectual exercise.
Unfortunately the seder has become rote. But Passover is about this huge theme of freedom that is central to Judaism.
I think some people bristle against ritual because they find it empty. But you’re saying there’s another way to approach rituals which is to think of them as tools or instruments that can help you focus on core principles — you actually list 11 — which include finding holiness everywhere, caring for the planet and engaging in social justice, to name a few. But that invites the criticism, which I think was also leveled at the “Catalog,” that Judaism shouldn’t be instrumental, because if you treat it as a means to an end that’s self-serving and individualistic.
Certainly rituals are tools, but tools in the best sense of the word. They help us pay attention to things in our lives and things in the world that need repair. And people use them not to get ahead in the world, but because they want to be a somewhat better person. I talk a lot these days about having a brief morning practice, and in the book I write about the mezuzah. For most Jews it’s become wallpaper, but what if you take the moment that you leave in the morning, and there’s a transition from home to the outside and to work perhaps, and take a moment at the doorpost to spiritually frame your day? What are the major principles that you want to keep in your mind when you know you’re gonna be stuck in traffic or a difficult meeting?
And a lot of traditional rituals are instrumental. Saying a blessing before you eat is a gratitude practice.
But why do I need a particular Jewish ritual or practice to help me feel gratitude or order my day? Aren’t there other traditions I can use to accomplish the same things?
Anybody who is a pluralist, which I am, knows that the Jewish way is not the only way. If I grew up in India or Indonesia and my parents were locals I probably wouldn’t be a rabbi and writing these books.
But a partial answer to your question is that Judaism is one of the oldest wisdom traditions in the world, and that there has been a 3,000-year conversation by the Jewish people about what it means to live in this tradition and to live in the world. And so I think there’s a lot of wisdom there.
So much in Jewish tradition says boundaries are good, and that it’s important to draw distinctions between what’s Jewish behavior and what’s not Jewish behavior, between the holy and the mundane, and that making those distinctions is a value in itself. But you argue strongly in an early chapter that that kind of binary thinking is not Judaism as you see it.
Underlying the book is the notion that Rabbinic Judaism carried the Jewish people for 2,000 years or so. But we’re living in a very different context, and the binaries, the dualities — too often they lead to hierarchy, so that, for example, men matter more than women in Jewish life. And we’ve tried to change that. We are living in an open society where we want to be more inclusive, not less inclusive. We don’t want to live in ghettos. Now, the ultra-Orthodox say, “No, we realize the danger of trying to live like that. We don’t think there’s anything of value in that modern world. And it’s all to be rejected.” And it would be foolish not to admit that in this very open world the Jews, as a minority, could kind of disappear. But I think that Judaism has so much value and wisdom and practices to offer to people that Judaism will continue to be part of the fabric of this world — the way, for example, we have given Shabbat as a concept to the world.
You know, in the first 11 chapters of the Torah, there are no Jews. So clearly, Jews and Judaism are not essential for the world to exist. And that’s a good, humbling message.
OK, but one could argue that while Jews aren’t necessary for the world to exist, Judaism is necessary for Jews to exist. And you write in your book, “If the Jewish people is to be a people, we need to have a commonly held tradition.” I think the pushback to the kind of openness and permeability you describe is that Jews can be so open and so permeable that they just fall through the holes.
It certainly is a possibility. And it’s also a possibility that the only Jews who will be around will be ultra-Orthodox Jews.
But if Judaism can only survive by being separatist, then I question whether it’s really worthwhile. That becomes a distorted vision of Judaism, and withdrawing is not what it’s meant to be. I think we’re meant to be in the world.
Your book is called “Judaism Disrupted.” What is disruptive about the Judaism that you’re proposing?
I meant it in two ways. First, Judaism is being disrupted by this very different world we’re living in. The contents of the ocean we swim in is very different than in the Middle Ages. But I’m also using it to say that Judaism is meant to disrupt our lives in a positive way, which is to say, “Wake up, pay attention.” You are here to live a life of meaning and purpose, and to continue as co-creators with God of the universe. You’re here to make the world better, to be kind and compassionate to people, to work on yourself. In my mind it is a shofar, “Wake up, sleepers, from your sleep!” “Judaism Disrupted” says you have to pay attention to issues like food, and justice, and teshuva [repentance].
You were ordained as a Reconstructionist rabbi. Do you think your book falls neatly into any of our current denominational categories?
[Reconstructionist founder] Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s notion of Judaism as an evolving religious civilization is the one that I feel closest to. But I feel that the denominational structure isn’t particularly useful anymore. There’s basically two categories, Orthodox and the various kinds of liberal Judaism, within a spectrum. The modern world is so fundamentally different in its relationship to Jews and Judaism that what we’re seeing is a variety of attempts to figure out how to respond. And that will then become the Judaism for the next millennium. It’s time for a lot of experimentation. I think that’s required and out of that will come a new “Minhag America,” to use Isaac Mayer Wise’s phrase for the emerging custom of American Jews [Wise was a Reform rabbi in the late 19th century]. And we don’t need to have everybody doing it one way. As long as people feel committed to Judaism, the Jewish tradition, even if they’re doing it very differently than the Jews of the past, they will be writing themselves into the conversation.
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Israel didn’t play in this World Cup. It has dominated the games anyway.
Sunday’s World Cup final has been billed as a contest between soccer powerhouses, colonizer versus colonized, and soccer’s past against its future. But the matchup of Spain and Argentina also represent two sides of today’s polarized global politics on Israel.
Under the leadership of President Javier Milei, Argentina has become one of Israel’s most steadfast supporters; the national team’s captain, Lionel Messi, a practicing Catholic, has made multiple trips to Israel.
Spain, on the other hand, styles itself as Israel’s most fervent Western adversary. It was among the first European countries to recognize a State of Palestine. There, too, politics have extended to the playing pitch: Spanish soccer prodigy Lamine Yamal — widely touted as Messi’s heir apparent — waved a Palestinian flag in May after his club team won the Spanish championship.
Their meeting in the final dovetails with a World Cup during which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict often felt unavoidable — even as neither of those teams appeared.
Throughout the six-week tournament, fans, players and national sporting bodies have used the World Cup as a platform to criticize Israel, highlight the suffering of Palestinians and call for Israel’s expulsion by FIFA, the soccer federation that organizes international competition. Marketed as a symbol of and catalyst for international unity, the 2026 World Cup also offered a reminder of Israel’s unique power to divide — and demonstrated that the wars raging in the Middle East remain fixed in the global popular imagination.
Much of the attention on Israel could be attributed to the Egyptian team, whose coach, Hossam Hassan, repeatedly foregrounded the Palestinian cause during his press conferences as the team forged into the tournament’s knockout rounds.
After Hassan in an interview dedicated Egypt’s victory to the Palestinian people, he said, “May God grant them victory, and may God have mercy on their martyrs.”
His comments decrying the situation in Gaza made him a hero in the enclave, where a mural depicting Hassan was painted on the rubble of a destroyed building. After Egypt’s ouster by Argentina, the coach confronted a fan who seemed to be taunting him with an Israeli flag; the referee of that game faced antisemitic smears afterward.
It was one of several incidents involving flags, as the stands became proxy battlegrounds for the conflict. One man waving an Israeli flag at an Iran game in Los Angeles had it confiscated, seemingly for provocation; the only official explanation reportedly provided was “security reasons.” with no mention of Israel’s war with Iran. Palestinian flags have flown in the terraces no matter who was playing, but especially at games involving first-time contestant Jordan.
There were larger protest actions, too: Thousands of Bosnian fans chanted “Palestina” in the streets of Toronto on their way to a game against Canada; Morocco fans broke out into “Free Palestine” chants in Houston. (There was a rumor that Morocco’s pro-Israel king, Mohammed VI, had a top player pulled from the team for waving a Palestinian flag on the pitch earlier this year.)
As the drama played out on fields across North America and in the concourses, a campaign to get Israel banned over the war from international soccer competition, which dates to 2024, continued apace. The national soccer federation of Norway, which became a tournament darling during the country’s first-ever run to the quarterfinals, joined several Middle Eastern nations in calls for Israel’s ouster from World Cup organizer FIFA and European soccer federation UEFA, citing those groups’ ejection of Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.
It was only logical that the relentless focus on Israel would culminate in Sunday’s final, where arguably the two biggest stars in the sport, Messi and Yamal, have played into the theme.
Messi’s appearances in Israel over the years on Barcelona and Argentina team trips — including a 2013 visit when he was photographed wearing a kippah at the Western Wall — have long made him a lightning rod for criticism and occasionally antisemitic slander from Arab leaders. Social media platforms filled with anti-Messi political sentiment in the last weeks as that photo recirculated.
The Argentine’s perceived Zionism — and if Yamal’s flag-waving is any indication, the apparent pro-Palestinian stance of Messi’s 19-year-old Spanish foil — mirrors the respective positions of the nations they play for. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has called to end arms sales to Israel and for travel bans on “anyone who has participated in the genocide.” Spain was also the site of the most successful anti-Israel protest in sports last year, when protesters repeatedly ground the Spanish Vuelta to a halt over the presence of an Israeli team.
On the other hand, breaking with its longstanding support for Palestinians, Argentina opposed their bid for statehood last September at the United Nations. Milei, who has described himself as the “most Zionist president in the world,” has proposed renaming Palestine Street in Buenos Aires to “Bibas Family Street” after the murdered Israeli hostages.
This simple but potent dichotomy has determined Sunday’s rooting interest for many neutral fans, and plenty non-neutral ones. Pro-Palestinian social media activists have built the case for Spain by pitting Messi against Yamal. Israelis — including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — have cited Milei’s support of Israel as a reason why they are rooting for Argentina. (To be sure, a lot of Israelis also just love the 39-year-old Messi because of what he can do with a soccer ball.)
The persistence of the conflict at the World Cup reflects the snowballing animus toward Israel in global cultural discourse. From Eurovision to literary societies to soccer, it’s all Israel all the time — an obsession that will feel disproportionate to the country’s supporters, but less so for Palestinians themselves. Saleem Al-Ashqar, a Palestinian goalkeeper, was shot dead by Israeli forces in Gaza last month; he is one of hundreds of Palestinian athletes who have been killed in the war that followed Oct. 7, 2023, according to Palestinian officials.
The international fixation on Israel at events like the World Cup is showing no signs of abating. The only thing that might dim the fervor is organizing bodies bowing to pressure to remove Israel — or the country itself altering course.
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The real outrage of Rep. Ro Khanna’s West Bank visit
The settler violence that Rep. Ro Khanna experienced on his recent visit to the West Bank has made headlines. But what was most important about this trip wasn’t what his delegation — of which I was a part — went through, but rather the people we met in the West Bank and the truths they told.
It’s the daily humiliations and abuse they suffer at the hands of Israeli settlers. It’s the dehumanization they feel, and the silence they encounter when they try to tell their stories to the world.
I’m an Israeli-American, and I’ve known Khanna for a decade. During that time, we’ve often agonized together over how best to leverage United States foreign policy to achieve a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. My family lived in Jerusalem for six generations; I emigrated to the U.S. 50 years ago. I am a peace activist who has spent the last two decades as a student of the conflict through my work with, among others, J Street and Combatants for Peace.
After years of deep engagement on these issues — including meetings with the families of multiple Israeli hostages and participation in several diplomatic trips to Israel — Khanna told me that he wanted to go see a part of the region that had been off limits with past delegations, and to truly understand the lives of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. As the stories of settlement expansion, movement restrictions, settler terrorism and home demolitions in the West Bank have grown louder and more intense in recent months, Khanna wanted to hear about life under occupation from people on the ground.
He especially wanted to meet members of marginalized Palestinian Christian communities, as well as Palestinian Americans living in the West Bank. He didn’t want a tour where someone else controlled the agenda. He wanted to see and hear the occupation for himself.
As we discussed this plan, it was clear that it was essential that the trip be Palestinian-led — a low-profile personal trip, not a diplomatic entourage. Many Palestinians will not meet with tours led by pro-Israel organizations. (Khanna’s staff was in touch with the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem around the personal visit, despite Ambassador Mike Huckabee alleging otherwise.) Even a liberal Jewish organization like J Street, whose congressional delegations I’ve had the privilege of accompanying, is not welcome in many places in the West Bank.
The itinerary involved visits to three areas that would show life in distinct sections of the West Bank. We began by visiting Bethlehem, Beit Sahour and Beit Jala and meeting with their mayors. These are Christian communities with tourism economies. We heard about the water shortages with which they must contend, because Israel restricts the water supply to Palestinians. We heard about the Israeli settlement of Yatziv seizing Beit Sahour’s only remaining open land for its own construction. We heard about the difficulty of being a Christian minority in a place that is holy to all three religions.
From there we moved to Hebron and the South Hebron Hills. In Hebron, we visited streets that are open to Israeli Jews and tourists but closed to local Palestinians. We saw markets where violent Israeli settlers have thrown refuse, urine and sometimes even acid on Palestinians.
South of Hebron, we visited the village of Umm al-Khair, where we met Eid Suleiman, a Palestinian peace activist deported from San Francisco while on a humanitarian mission in 2025. His travel companion, his cousin Awdah Hathaleen, was shot and killed by Israeli settler Yinon Levi — who was filmed at the scene and never charged — in the summer of 2025.
We mourned Hathaleen. And we saw the sheer terror that continues to be inflicted on this village by the neighboring Israeli settlements — the daily violence, harassment, destruction of property and land confiscation.
On the last day, we visited Turmus Ayya in the north.
It is an amazing place, populated mainly by Palestinian Americans. These families have kept their homes and their land for generations. We spent hours with Palestinian Americans who live 11 months of the year in the U.S. and spend one month tending to their homes and land in the West Bank. In the U.S., they are police officers, doctors, psychologists — equal participants in a pluralistic democracy. When they return to their homeland, their rights are stripped away within minutes of landing in Tel Aviv.
They told us how they undergo intense interrogations and delays at Ben Gurion Airport. How, at checkpoints, many endure abuse for not speaking Hebrew. They told us how their towns and homes have been damaged and their cars burned by mobs of marauding settlers. They told us they feel human in the U.S., but subhuman in Palestine.
These are the important points of this trip. These are the things we should be talking about. The finger-pointing and accusations that have followed Khanna’s accurate account of having our road blocked by settlers are a distraction.
The life stories we heard from Palestinians over three days were jarring. These truths will reverberate in my mind for years, long after the finger-pointing is over.
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More Democrats than ever are voting against aid to Israel. That could actually be good for Israel
Israel is losing Democratic support in the same way a character in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises went bankrupt: “gradually and then suddenly.”
When 103 House Democrats voted for a resolution that would eliminate United States aid to Israel yesterday — that was the “suddenly.” Even though the resolution didn’t pass, what seemed unimaginable on a few years ago now, after a period of gradual change, looks inevitable. When the current $38-billion weapons aid agreement between the U.S. and Israel winds down in 2028, the next one will involve what House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called “a major reset” in the relationship.
And you know what? It’s long overdue. This shocking, historic vote is an opportunity to redefine the U.S.-Israel relationship in a way that benefits the U.S., Israel, Palestinians and the region.
Proponents have always framed U.S. aid to Israel as a win-win. We give them money — most of which has to be spent on American-made weapons — and in exchange Israel serves as a kind of land-based battleship in the Middle East. It looks out for American interests in a volatile region.
But increasingly, Americans are failing to see the value in that bargain. A recent poll found that 48% of Americans feel the U.S. is too supportive of Israel. At least among young people, this antipathy doesn’t just exist on the left: 53% of Republicans under age 45 oppose renewing the current aid agreement.
The fact of Israel’s booming economy, driven by the high tech and weapons industries that make it a valuable U.S. partner, has fueled that opposition. Why, a growing number of Americans ask, should our tax dollars fund a country that ranks 24th in median adult wealth according to a newly released USB survey — while the U.S. itself ranks 28th?
But what opponents mostly object to is Israeli government policy under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has cashed American checks and carried on with policies in Gaza and the West Bank that most Americans — including most American Jews — reject. What defenders have long asserted is a mutually beneficial arrangement increasingly feels more like a teenager with a credit card and a bad attitude.
A better approach, the “reset” Jeffries speaks of, would adjust the relationship from one of parent and child to one of peers and partners.
Ensuring Israel’s long term security would continue to be a key goal of that partnership. The U.S. might stop funding Israeli weapons purchases, but it could still sell Israel defensive systems.
But the security of Palestinians and other Israeli neighbors would also be key. The U.S. ought to consider defense guarantees to Israel and certain neighbors, including the Gulf States and even, perhaps, a reformed Syria. Those guarantees should come with sanctions if any government misuses American-made weapons. Security also means funding humanitarian aid that is attached to rooting out extremism and promoting freedom and self-determination.
Such a reset could make Israel itself stronger: less reliant on the whims of U.S. foreign and domestic policy; better able to diversify its sourcing and sale of weapons; and a key player in a regional peace, which includes the Palestinians. All of those changes could help bring true security.
These outcomes may seem aspirational. But it’s not like the old and now defunct patterns of aid were bringing Israelis the security they need. Democrats and Republicans, by listening to changing public opinion, have a chance to establish a new relationship rooted in a new vision.
Make no mistake, this vision will not satisfy the hardcore anti-Israel crowd on either side of the aisle. They want no aid and no partnership. They want to boycott Israeli products, artists and academics and arrest Israeli leaders. Their solution is the dissolution of the Israeli state.
Some of the Democrats who voted for the resolution no doubt belong in this category — among them the bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who was the sole House member to vote “nay” on a Nov. 2023 resolution affirming Israel’s right to exist.
But many Democrats who voted for the Wednesday resolution said they did so despite their ongoing support for Israel, as a way to lodge their dissatisfaction with Netanyahu’s policies.
“We simply cannot continue to condone Netanyahu’s actions that are against our moral conscience and our own national security interests by perpetuating the status quo,” said Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, who has a long record of support for Israel.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss, also of Massachusetts, voted for the bill, but said it “should not impair the state of Israel’s right to defend itself against the atrocities of the terrorist regimes that threaten it.”
Both Auchincloss and Moulton pointed out the bill’s flaws, among them that it would deny Israel purely defensive weapons systems, as well as humanitarian aid that also serves Palestinians.
But if Israel’s sensible supporters can, once the current agreement expires, put one in place that allows for defensive weapons and humanitarian aid, they’ll be on the way to promoting a more effective partnership than that we have now. Doing so could dampen the extremes both here and in Israel. It could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
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