To Be a Jew Today by Noah Feldman

To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People

by Noah Feldman

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024

In his thoughtful new book, Harvard scholar Noah Feldman tries to puzzle out what it means To Be a Jew Today. After tracing how different groups of Jews envision (or don’t envision) God, the author considers how these religious divisions are often accompanied by equally contentious understandings of the importance of Israel in Jewish life.

Instead of providing a simple delineation of Jews into categories from ultra-Orthodox to Reform, Feldman outlines the wide spectrum of specific Jewish beliefs about proper religious observance. He starts with Traditionalists who seek to follow “what they consider the unbroken tradition of Jewish belief and practice,” including a commitment to the absolute authority of God’s will. Traditionalists adhere to what the author says is “almost the opposite of [most modern Americans’] background conditions of freedom and multiplicity.” It is, as Feldman says, fundamentally “illiberal or even antiliberal”—and sometimes “terrible and cruel” in both its antifeminism and its “nonrecognition of difference” in cases of sexuality and gender identity. This illiberality is not because Traditionalists want to be harsh or exclusive; instead, it is because what they believe does not depend upon the vagaries of contemporary ideological perspectives. Instead, they are committed to the Jewish observances passed down l’dor v’dor, from generation to generation. Despite the rejection of many modern ethical ideas, Traditionalists’ beliefs facilitate the creation of a tight-knit and lasting community.

Jewish Evolutionists, “want to acknowledge the ultimate authority of Jewish law,” writes Feldman, “while simultaneously seeking to accommodate liberal or at least modern beliefs.” For example, some Evolutionists, have grappled with the question of whether women can become rabbis and synagogue officials, while Traditionalists would simply reject that option. Feldman himself was raised within this middle ground of Judaism and respects its thoughtful and rigorous grappling with how to balance of tradition and progress, but he points out that Evolutionism “can be extremely difficult to maintain, intellectually, spiritually, and logically” since its “most important characteristic…is internal contradiction.”

Jewish Progressives, on the other hand, are committed to what Feldman calls a “divine moral order”—one many Progressives believe is only metaphorical—“whose eternal truths of justice and love unfold in progress through history, rather than being fixed.” In other words, for Progressives, Jewish practice need not be unchanging but instead should resonate with contemporary ethical thought. “When a new moral truth becomes prominent in liberal Western belief, Progressive Jews see it as part of the eternal truth of the truth that God (however defined) always intended,” explains Feldman, “and that has now emerged through the human historical process of experience and reasoning.” They believe that the most important part of Judaism is not its religious law but its commitment to justice, a concept sometimes articulated through the Kabbalistic concept of tikkun olam—that is, humans’ responsibility to help repair what is broken in the world.

Despite the differing and even conflicting ways in which Jews interpret key issues of both belief and practice, Feldman insists that all Jews are part of a family—a family that, like all others, “includes its fair share of internal disagreement within the framework of familial love.” To Be a Jew Today was published at an especially fraught moment when bonds within this diverse Jewish family are more strained than ever. Much of that tension is due to different and sometimes opposing viewpoints on Israel.

Even before Hamas’s attack on October 7th and Israel’s subsequent military retaliation, the topic of Israel caused significant tension within the diverse Jewish family. A few Progressives have argued for decades that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has always been unjust. Other Progressive Jews have been persuaded only in recent years, often because of larger cultural discussions about colonialism. Now, the brutality of Israel’s war on Gaza—a war that has left tens of thousands of Gazans dead, nearly eighty thousand injured, and a significant percentage of Gaza’s population not only displaced from their homes but facing starvation—has led many Jews to question Zionism for the very first time.

Politically conservative Traditionalists and Evolutionists often assume that rejecting Zionism means rejecting both Judaism and Jewish identity. Progressives, on the other hand, see it completely differently: their anti-Zionism is motivated by what they believe is a specifically Jewish responsibility to fight for justice for all people. Their activism is because of—not in spite of—their Judaism. At Passover seders around the world this week, including seders celebrated at Palestinian solidarity protests, Progressive Jews have linked the story of their own ancestors’ oppression with the oppression of other peoples—a link they make every year—and they have pledged yet again to work for a world where all people will be free.

Perhaps it is facile to point out that Feldman may be overly optimistic about the existence of deep familial love between politically conservative Traditionalist Jews and left-leaning Progressive Jews. What is more obvious is how much Feldman himself loves the entire Jewish family. His insightful analysis of the particular struggles or weaknesses of each group is nuanced and gentle, and it is matched with a tremendously generous and sympathetic discussion of the ways each group’s values and practices contribute to the whole.

Hannah Joyner lives in Washington, D.C. Her books include Unspeakable and From Pity to Pride. You can find her on Booktube at https://www.youtube.com/c/HannahsBooks.