But seriously, a snide and sarcastic tone, and an ironic disposition does not a Jew make, and, let’s be real, though there is plenty of humor to be mined from the over-the-top pageantry of the modern Bar and Bat Mitzvah, and in making fun of our geriatric, Florida-dwelling grandparents, we cannot expect that such an amorphous “cultural Judaism” (which is quite frankly parasitic rather than creative) will be enough to keep uninvolved young Jews “Jewish” in any discernible way. There was once a secular Jewish culture that functioned to instill Yiddishkeit absent religious conviction, but that culture was firmly grounded in language, namely Yiddish, and is probably not reproducible. So the question is this; outside of Israel, where it is possible to construct a concrete secular Jewish identity, how does one make Jews, and make those Jews want to make their kids Jews, without shoving religion down people’s throats

No comments.