I wrote a passionate blog a few days
ago about the inability of most American Jews to see the historic
importance of President Bush.
I've had more time to look at the situation. First, the Israelis, who are aware of their role in history, are wildly supportive of the American President. Seventy percent of Israelis and 80% of American Israelis strongly support Bush.
Second, the group of people in America who are most closely tied to history, the Orthodox Jews, are just as strongly supportive of President Bush as are Israelis.
Third, when I think of American Jews who reject President Bush, I think of real people ... Bobby G., Lisa B, Don N., Sara A., John P., Leonard K. and Rabbi L. Real people, my friends. Nothing Bush says or does opens their minds. Lefty Fundamentalism is paramount in their secular-Jewish lives.
I believe the reason is that Felix
Adler has triumphed. Only a few people in New York will know who
Adler is, a few more will know when I mention that he founded the
Ethical Culture movement in the 1880's. New Yorkers might know of Ethical Culture because one
of the best high schools in Manhattan is named Ethical Culture Fieldston.
Adler believed that Judaism would thrive in America if it were stripped of its religious and ethnic elements. That is what Ethical Culture is. I believe that nearly every Conservative and Reform schul and temple in America now accepts Judaism in the form that Adler conceived it. The only difference among the shuls and temples is the overlay of ethnicity they allow back into their ethical culture worldview. Some Reform Jews accept blintz's and rabbis wearing talit with a smattering of Hebrew in the service. Conservatives accept yiddish, gefilte fish and talit worn by the congregants.
The Conservative and Reform Jews of
America have a spiritual system that is weak and superficial with only a sentimental culinary connection to history.
The consequence is that Lefty
Fundamentalism, which has been a triumphant religious view among most
Jews for a century, has now trumped the Judaism of the Conservative and Reform. Lefty
Fundamentalism is today the religion of Conservative and Reform Jews
and their spirituality is Ethical Culture with a schmear of lox and cream cheese.
I'm clearly not an authority on contemporary Judaism, so you have no reason to accept my views on this issue. I even have a disclaimer: my mother's side of the family were among the founders of Ethical Culture and one great aunt, Blanche Herz, founded the Ethical Culture elementary school in Manhattan and an Ethical Culture camp for girls in Maine.
Is there a better explanation of the failure of Conservative and Reform Jews to recognize the Olympian importance of George W. Bush, the first significant friend of Jews in history?