Tal Keinan - God Is in the Crowd: Twenty-First-Century Judaism

This book first took form as a diary. I used it to record my ambivalent thoughts on affiliation with a tribe, the Jews. I was born with membership but, in my early years, did not accept it as anything more than an option I would be unlikely to redeem. I was American. My interest in Judaism was, ironically, sparked by a Protestant minister at a New England prep school. It was not religion I was seeking. It was belonging. My parents had divorced when I was a child. I had changed schools every year or two since then. I wanted a home, and I discovered one in Judaism.

Membership in the Jewish tribe became the obsession that animated the most important, and the most reckless, decision of my young life. I moved to Israel and committed to an eight-year stint in the Israeli Air Force. I was nineteen years old and still knew very little about the membership I had claimed. The intensity of my military service left almost no time for contemplating Judaism. It was only toward the end of that service that I again began to question the specific value of membership in the Jewish People.

My relationship with Judaism has become more thoughtful in adulthood. I have been supported by teachers from the worlds of Jewish theology, Israeli politics, and American Jewish activism, and by some who have nothing to do with Jewish affairs. Most of my postAir Force professional life has been at Clarity, an asset management firm. I have shuttled between Claritys offices in the United States and Israel, the two countries that currently account for almost 90 percent of the worlds Jews. I have the privilege of living in both. My Jewish associates at Clarity have hailed from six continents and have represented most of the spectrum of Jewish affiliation, including Reform, Conservative, and Modern Orthodox Judaism. Years of intimate intellectual engagement with my colleagues, in matters ranging from Jewish history to mathematics, have provided a framework for the prescriptive thinking behind God Is in the Crowd.

I wrote this book having read much of the existing literature on Jewish Peoplehood. I would consider it a great success if it inspired readers to seek a diversity of views on Jewish identity, and to examine alternative prescriptions for Jewish continuity. I hope for the book to open a personal window through which greater numbers of Jews, affiliated and unaffiliated, might be able to contemplate the value of their Judaism, to themselves as individuals, to their communities, and to humanity as a whole. I hope for the book to inspire these people to claim a role in defining this value, an act that does not require years of Jewish scholarship.

A common Hebrew proverb loosely translates as It is the new guest who sees the homes faults. As I was spared the indoctrination implicit in much of structured Jewish education, my own approach to the home of Judaism was originally that of a guest. The questions I pose here emerge directly from my personal Jewish journey. My prognosis for the Jewish future is grim. The severity of that prognosis drives the aggressiveness of my prescription, a remedy that some have perceived as radical. The ideas behind God Is in the Crowd have already framed a debate within a small group of Jewish and non-Jewish thinkers. My ambition for the book is to draw a critical mass of the world Jewish community into this debate. I believe that only through the engagement of this critical mass, a population I describe as the Crowd, will the Jewish People claim control of its destiny.

Many of God Is in the Crowds early readers are Jewish leaders who have invested tremendous energy and immense financial resources in Jewish continuity. Organizations such as the Jewish Agency, and initiatives such as Birthright Israel, have shaped the course of recent Jewish history. But the Jewish reality continues to evolve. If we fail to recognize this evolution and adapt our approach, we will look back on these efforts one day and realize that they only bought us more time. If the Jewish People is to survive, in Israel, in the United States, and in the remnants of Diaspora, Judaism must reclaim its relevance to the individual by reestablishing its spiritual value. It must reclaim its relevance to the community by finding common cause among a critical mass of its individual adherents. This can happen only through the continued evolution of Jewish thought and practice. In an era of seemingly limitless personal options, our choice as a community is stark: Create meaning in Judaism or accept extinction.