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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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J Street goes on the offensive against AIPAC-backed candidates
(JTA) — J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East advocacy group, announced that it will spend $3 million to defeat a handful of Republican candidates backed by AIPAC, joining the plethora of progressive groups targeting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee this election year.
Such an attack campaign is an unusual initiative for J Street, which typically endorses candidates but does not target opponents on the basis of an AIPAC endorsement. Until now, according to J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami, the likelier scenario for his organization was finding its endorsed candidates on the defensive against AIPAC’s spending.
“It’s a new era for us,” Ben-Ami said in an interview. In 2022, J Street targeted an AIPAC backed candidate — but only after AIPAC barraged the J Street endorsed candidate with negative spending.
In a statement, J Street said that this will be the group’s largest super PAC investment in its history, referring to political action committees that can raise unlimited funds but are forbidden from coordinating with campaigns.
The $3 million will be spent on ads targeting Republican Rep. Mike Collins, who is running for U.S. Senate in Georgia against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is Jewish, and a handful of incumbents: Ohio Rep. Max Miller, who is running for reelection amid allegations of domestic abuse, which he denies; Wisconsin Rep. Derrick Van Orden; Pennsylvania Rep. Ryan Mackenzie; and Iowa Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks.
Ben-Ami said J Street targeted those particular candidates in part because they each face competitive races as the Democrats look to take control of the House and Senate and they have ideological distance from J Street. Many of them were also connected to the movement to deny and overturn the 2020 election results, Ben-Ami said.
J Street’s campaign comes as AIPAC’s brand has become increasingly toxic among voters, and as a growing number of Democratic politicians cross its red line of supporting conditions on U.S. military aid to Israel. J Street’s position, meanwhile, has recently drifted toward supporting a phasing-out of military aid to Israel in 2028.
AIPAC blasted the campaign in a post on X. “Is this from J Street or Justice Democrats?” AIPAC wrote, referring to the progressive organization that has increasingly aligned with pro-Palestinian advocacy.
“A dark money super PAC spending millions to defeat pro-Israel candidates and lie about AIPAC,” the group wrote. “Not a word about helping elect pro-Israel candidates further exposes the difference between J Street and actual pro-Israel organizations.”
AIPAC has been a heavy spender since it launched its super PAC, United Democracy Project, ahead of the 2022 midterms, and is the top outside spender in this election cycle, according to Open Secrets. A number of anti-AIPAC, pro-Palestinian groups have emerged over the past year to counter the pro-Israel lobbying group’s spending.
Unlike those groups, J Street and AIPAC have some overlap in which candidates they back: Both groups endorsed moderate, pro-Israel Democrats such as Reps. Hakeem Jeffries and Dan Goldman. J Street’s super PAC has also previously targeted individual candidates for their AIPAC endorsement, such as Rep. Haley Stevens in 2022, citing AIPAC’s donations from right-wing megadonors.
An AIPAC spokesperson wrote that it is “disappointing, but not surprising, that J Street continues to amplify lies about our community.”
“AIPAC members are focused on helping elect Democrats and Republicans who will strengthen the U.S.-Israel partnership, while J Street is focused on turning support for the Jewish state into a partisan political football,” said AIPAC’s spokesperson.
Ben-Ami said this year’s campaign is not about “the relationship between us and AIPAC,” but is rather about emboldening candidates who may otherwise worry that they will be up against AIPAC’s war chest.
“We are very conscious that there are many candidates who are afraid of what AIPAC might be able to do politically, and therefore adopt positions and say things about policy because they are afraid, and their fear and intimidation is holding them back,” Ben-Ami said.
Now, he said, J Street is putting “the shoe on the other foot.”
“If you are going to oppose American democracy and provide carte blanche to this Israeli government, then you need to be afraid,” he said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post J Street goes on the offensive against AIPAC-backed candidates appeared first on The Forward.
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Germany’s far-right AfD, riding state win, targets more gains in elections from east to west
(JTA) — Germany’s far-right, riding high after winning an eastern state, seeks to capitalize on its momentum in a series of upcoming elections — starting with municipal voting this weekend, followed by two closely watched state contests.
The first test for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party comes Sunday in municipal elections in the western state of Lower Saxony. A week later, the AfD has its sights on state elections in the capital, Berlin, and the Baltic coast state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
The AfD beat out other parties in Saxony-Anhalt on Sept. 6 with 43.8% of the vote and 39 of 83 state parliament seats, falling just short of a majority and marking Germany’s greatest far-right victory in a state election since World War II.
“From previous elections, we know that the AfD is currently able to mobilize almost totally its own constituency and potential voters, while its democratic competitors have much more problems,” said Gideon Botsch, the head of the Emil Julius Gumbel Research Unit on Antisemitism and Right-Wing Extremism at Potsdam University.
While polls do not predict the next state election results will match the historic win in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD currently leads other parties in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania with about 35% of the vote. And in Berlin, long a stronghold of Germany’s political left, the AfD is jockeying with the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the left-wing Linke for first place, with all three polling around 20%.
The AfD, a nationalist, anti-immigrant party whose leaders have proposed rejecting Germany’s “guilt complex” over the Holocaust, has regularly topped nationwide opinion polls for the past year. In surveys asking Germans which party they would choose if federal elections were held “this Sunday,” the AfD often receives the highest results, Botsch told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The AfD has built a dedicated and growing base, said Botsch. Its popularity signals frustration with the mainstream parties in power, particularly the CDU, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party, amid a sluggish economy. The AfD is especially popular in eastern Germany, where voters are poorer and hit hard by high energy prices exacerbated by the wars in Iran and Ukraine.
The AfD is likely to perform more weakly in the west, where Lower Saxony will hold a municipal election on Sunday. The party has stronger influence in the east, and Germany’s municipal elections tend to hinge more on well-known figures from established parties, said Roger Stöcker, a political scientist at Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg. Still, even if the AfD doesn’t transform governments, Stöcker said that making inroads to further entrench itself in Lower Saxony would be “a strategically significant success.”
“It’s conceivable that the AfD wins a town hall or a county administration here and there or strengthens its presence in local councils, expanding its local base,” said Stöcker.
The three upcoming elections are being closely watched for signs of the AfD’s wider-scale momentum, said Daniel Schuster, who heads the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s European office.
“Taken together, these elections can help show whether Saxony-Anhalt was an exceptionally strong eastern result or part of a broader national expansion of the AfD’s electoral base,” said Schuster.
Remko Leemhuis, the director of the American Jewish Committee Berlin Lawrence and Lee Ramer Institute for German-Jewish Relations, added that residents will feel the effects of the AfD’s success even if it falls short of its victory in Saxony-Anhalt. A “very strong AfD result,” short of managing to enter government coalitions, would still “raise serious concerns” for Jewish residents about the party’s influence, said Leemhuis.
Residents in Saxony-Anhalt are waiting to see the ramifications of the AfD’s election victory. Without an outright majority, the party needs partners to join a coalition. Its nationalist agenda in the region includes teaching children less about Hitler, banning Pride flags in public buildings and requiring artists and cultural organizations to sign a declaration that they will not “disparage Germany and its culture” if they seek state funding.
State governments also control domestic policing and parts of the judiciary. The AfD could use its power in these areas to “put pressure on minorities it dislikes,” including immigrants, Muslims and Jews who are identified with Holocaust remembrance, said Stöcker. At the same time, the AfD could direct policing and intelligence away from right-wing extremism in Saxony-Anhalt, which recorded the second-highest number of right-wing extremist crimes per capita of Germany’s 16 states last year, Leemhuis said.
The AfD’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt marked a “watershed moment” in German politics, according to Roland Abold, the managing director of Infratest Dimap, a German election research institute. Abold said that the result heaped pressure on Merz and the federal government, as “calls for a change in political direction and a reassessment of cooperation with the AfD are likely to intensify.”
The CDU for now is standing behind Merz, the most unpopular chancellor in modern German history after 16 months in power. But if the CDU faces further heavy defeats in the upcoming elections, questions about Merz as the party’s leader could escalate, said Stöcker.
The AfD already has its eyes on his job. Alice Weidel, the national AfD’s co-chair, announced on Monday that she wants the party to win “at least 40% of the vote” in Germany’s next federal election in 2029.
Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD candidate in Saxony-Anhalt who hopes to become the state premier, said in the same press conference that his goal was “very clear.”
“As perhaps the next Minister-President of Saxony-Anhalt, I need a Federal Chancellor Alice Weidel here in Berlin, so that we can write here history side by side,” said Siegmund.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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I was born after 9/11. I still carry the memories of that day.
Earlier this week, I was talking with my mother over the phone about her experience on 9/11. She walked me through the familiar parts — how she was in our Upper West Side apartment when she learned about the attacks from a relative, how she went to the garage to get the car so they could drive to a friend’s house upstate once she realized the attacks were acts of terror. There were still hijacked planes in the air, and she worried New York City might be targeted again. Then, she said, “This part is going to make me cry.”
I hadn’t remembered what came next, but suddenly it came back to me. “Oh no, me too,” I said.
While she waited for my father to come back uptown from his office in the Financial District, she stopped inside a fire station across from the garage. Inside was a lone firefighter, who’d stayed behind to man the station while the rest of his company was inside the towers. He was watching the news on television, and my mom stood next to him, watching too, when the towers fell.
“We just lost so many men,” he said.
I wasn’t there when it happened; I wasn’t even alive. But I’d heard this story before, I’d walked dozens of times past that same fire station, which now has a plaque commemorating the seven firefighters who died on 9/11. Hearing the story again on the phone, I found myself walking down the streets of Washington D.C., bawling.
I’m 23, born a year-and-a-half after 9/11. Most Americans my age learned about the attacks in school, as history. I’m part of the 16% who learned through family or friends.
The discovery happened by accident, when I was in kindergarten. My mom and I were in a children’s store on the Upper West Side, when we started flipping through a picture book about the history of New York City. Most of the book was unremarkable, but the end was unexpected: a scene of the smoldering twin towers.
I forget what exactly happened next, but here’s what I do remember: My mom was upset that the shop hadn’t provided a warning about the book’s end, and I was confused about why she was upset. I was five, too young to understand the image and never one to let a question go unanswered; I must have pestered her until she offered up an explanation.
She hadn’t been prepared to tell me about terrorism. She’d been evading the topic for some time, telling half-truths to avoid it. When I’d ask her why we had to take our shoes off in line at the airport, she’d just say it was to make sure no one had anything dangerous, leaving out the part about how a man had tried to get on a flight with bombs hidden in his shoes.
“9/11 is a huge thing for a parent to have to tell a kid about,” my mom told me this week. “You were a happy kid, and I didn’t want you to get scared or traumatized.”
The events, and impacts, of that day slowly unfolded for me as the years passed. I learned that my father had watched from Battery Park as the South Tower fell; he ran westward as plumes of smoke billowed toward him. I learned that my parents had friends who’d died in the towers, one of whom was the father of a boy I grew up with. I remember going to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum when it opened in 2014, feeling sick as I watched footage of people jumping out of the towers.
The New York Times recently interviewed dozens of Gen Z Americans about 9/11. I was struck by how disconnected many felt from the event. “It’s hard to feel sad about something that you don’t remember,” said Annika Heegaard, a 25-year-old now living in New York.
But for me, 9/11 doesn’t feel quite so far away. By now I’ve lived through other mass casualty events, like the Parkland shooting and the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. But 9/11 is the only tragedy that my family members had such a direct connection to. “It was devastating,” my mom said.
I think the reason I can remember the exact moment I found out about 9/11 is because it changed my view of the world. I remember being almost unable to comprehend that anyone would do what the hijackers did. I wasn’t, as my mom feared, traumatized by learning about the attacks; I didn’t fear for my safety each day. But the knowledge was in some ways a loss of innocence — a discovery that people could do awful things and that the world wasn’t as safe a place as I had assumed.
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