What do we do now?
Many Jews, all over the world, are asking themselves that question during these difficult weeks.
Israelis are asking: What do we do now – to rebuild our land, our towns, our kibbutzim, our broken lives?
Consider these words by David Hazony:
As the hours pass, shock gives way to infinite anger.
The rage is directed above all at Hamas — and all those who support, abet, fund, arm, defend or show understanding for them, including those Palestinians in Gaza who support them and those preening self-righteous “pro-Palestinian” Westerners whose antisemitic veil is so thin as to be promiscuous.
Those who prattle on about “genocide” but have no qualms about enabling it under the banner of “resistance.”
What twisted mind considers killing and kidnapping toddlers a legitimate form of “resistance”?
We are only now starting to see the names, the images, the lives prematurely ended.
Many in their early 20s. But also children, parents, grandparents.
People we know. My son’s best friend and a friend’s best friend’s son.
We are hearing awful stories by the hour. Death is everywhere — 700 dead and still counting.
If it were not for the urgency of battle, we would be drowning in sorrow.
We cannot even properly console those who grieve. There is no time.
Five of my children are now in uniform, three of them suddenly. A sixth is volunteering on an ambulance.
Entire high-tech companies have stopped operations because half the staff has been called up.
The other half can’t really work because school-age kids are at home. Schools are shuttered because there are still terrorists among us looking for a target.
Modern-day Palestinian Einsatzgruppen hunting for children to shoot or kidnap.
If there is evil on this Earth, it is this.
American Jews, and others, are asking: What do we do now – to rebuild our hope – the hope that symbolized the Zionist dream from its very beginnings; that sense of youthful optimism and vitality that has come under fire – symbolically and literally – in Israel’s 75th year?
What does it mean to maintain hope in the Jewish future?
The problem is that there are almost too many answers to that question – looking at what our Jewish priorities should be.
A new book — “Jewish Priorities: Sixty-Five Proposals for the Future of Our People” — offers its readers numerous answers to those complex questions.
This is an amazing, unnerving, and challenging book.
It brings together a remarkable array of new essays from across the Jewish world. An unprecedented, large-scale collection of timely and provocative essays from a wide range of Jewish thought leaders that aims to start a global conversation among Jews about their future as a people.
In the words of its editor, David Hazony:
For generations, the Jewish agenda has been set in a top-down manner. In the Diaspora, institutional leaders and major philanthropists work together to establish our communal priorities, not just on the basis of what is truly needed, but also—even primarily—on the basis of what can be funded. That might have been necessary a generation or two ago, but in today’s decentralized, sophisticated, and technologically empowered Jewish world, it is not a good way to engage our best minds in a process that challenges our assumptions and moves us forward as a people.
What we really need—and perhaps have needed for a long time—is a good old-fashioned intellectual food fight. A democratized Jewish free-for-all. A spirited brawl between two covers.
Listen to the podcast — which we dedicate, prayerfully, to David’s children who are presently in the IDF, fighting for the security of the state of Israel.
