Why Should Jews Survive?: Looking Past the Holocaust Toward a Jewish Future - Hardcover

Goldberg, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195091094 ISBN 13: 9780195091090

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1995

Synopsis

In the fifty years since the Holocaust, the Jewish People have felt one overriding concern: survival. The ghosts of the murdered six million, along with the living generation of survivors, have called out the unifying chant, "never again." In 1948, this concern found a second focus in the state of Israel, the ultimate refuge of Jews worldwide. But Rabbi Michael Goldberg finds that these twin pillars of Jewish identity are brittle, and have already begun to crumble; they will not be enough to support or sustain the next generation. The time has come to answer the question: Why should Jews survive?
In this provocative book, Goldberg launches a bold attack on what he calls the "Holocaust cult," challenging Jews to return to a deeper, richer sense of purpose. He argues that this cult--with shrines like the U.S. Holocaust Museum, high priests such as Elie Wiesel, and rites like UJA death camp pilgrimages--is deeply destructive of Jewish identity. As the current "master story" of Judaism, Goldberg writes, the Holocaust has been used to depict Jews as uniquely victimized in human history--transforming them from God's chosen to those who manage to survive despite God's silent complicity in their persecution. This Holocaust-centered, survival-for-survival's-sake Judaism is already showing its emptiness, Goldberg contends; the generation that survived Hitler and founded Israel is dying, and the new generation seems adrift (for instance, one recent survey predicts that 70% of American Jewish marriages will be intermarriages by the turn of the century). Jews need positive reasons for remaining Jewish, he argues; they need to return to the Exodus as their master story--the story of God leading the Jews out of slavery and making with them an eternal covenant that gave the Jews a unique place in God's plan. The Jews should survive, Goldberg concludes, because they are the linchpin in God's redemption of the world.
Rabbi Michael Goldberg has long wrestled with the crisis of identity facing today's Jewish community. In Why Should Jews Survive?, he provides a provocative and powerfully argued challenge to the dominant theme of modern Jewish thought.

About this title

About the Author

About the Author:
Michael Goldberg is Rabbi of Congregation B'nai Tikvah in Los Angeles. He was Founding Rabbi of Congregation Lev Chadash, a first-of-its-kind "covenantal" synagogue in Indianapolis, and has held chairs of Jewish Studies at St. John's University (Minnesota) and at the College of William and Mary. He is a founder and principal of Vision Design, a strategic planning consultancy for synagogues and churches, and has served as Special Consultant to the Georgia Supreme Court. His books include Theology and Narrative; Jews and Christians, Getting Our Stories Straight; and Against the Grain: New Approaches to Professional Ethics.

From Booklist

The title Goldberg chooses for his denunciation of a mentality of victimization among Jews should cause a stir, but not as much as will his arguments. He asserts that it is important to study the Holocaust, yet he laments that the study has taken on almost religious dimensions. For Goldberg, to portray Jewish history as a long series of suffering, culminating in World War II, is not only inaccurate; it is a "deeply anti-Semitic" assessment of the Jewish people as "spineless." He chastises the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, saying that if its goal "is to spur America's conscience so that it never happens again, so far, it seems, it's been a $167 million bust." He criticizes a militant belief in martyrdom as he compares the Jews' mass suicide in resistance to the Romans at Masada to that of the Jonestown cult. Deeply religious himself, he concludes that the Jews' mission is to carry out God's redemption of the world. These are all provocative ideas. It's about time Judaic studies received such an alarming wake-up call. Aaron Cohen

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0195091094
• ISBN 13: 9780195091090
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208