Sublime

Jews-by-choice also bring with them a unique passion for Judaism. Many speak of “falling in love” with Judaism for a variety of reasons: because it invites them to wrestle with God, because it identifies the home as a sanctuary, because Judaism is inseparable from a call to social justice. For born-Jews whose Jewish education and connection stopped

Judaism, I discovered, demands an appreciation of complexity and scrupulous consideration of opposing views.

A religion of emotive intuition, of aestheticized and commodified experience, of self-creation and self-improvement and, yes, selfies. A religion for a new generation of Americans raised to think of themselves both as capitalist consumers and as content creators. A religion decoupled from institutions, from creeds, from metaphysical truth-claims ab

in a post-Durkheimian age religion would be completely severed from people’s conceived history, fading into one’s individualized and completely buffered sense of the self as a completely self-chosen identity.

The hippies had been seeking (believing) that the right idea would create freedom. The charismatic evangelicals of California exhorted that Jesus was just this idea. Just as you could commit to an idea of hip, to the importance of committing to this thing over another, so you could commit to Jesus.

The old Israel is replaced by the new. There is no longer a covenant with Abraham’s children. The new covenant is made with whoever heeds its call.