The deluge of hate and anti-Semitism has done more to move the needle on Jewish identity than millions in kiruv funding
PHOTO: MOSHE SHAI/FLASH90
IN an age when the average phone packs more sensors than a Cold War satellite, no device yet exists to track spiritual level. More’s the pity, because if a belief-o-meter came as standard, Jewish cell phones would be vibrating like lulavim.
The October 8 Jew — a term coined by the New York Times’ Bret Stephens — is utterly unlike his October 6 counterpart. As a nation, we’re traumatized, isolated, and far more somber than before. And after a year of reporting and talking to Jews across the spectrum, it’s my strong belief that the average October 8 Jew is now more interested in his faith than at any time in recent memory.
At risk of blowing my own shofar, that’s the conclusion of my road journey through the Gaza border kibbutzim printed (at doorstopper length) in this issue. It’s obvious in a hundred separate cries of liberal Jewish pain published this year, particularly Franklin Foer’s disturbing Atlantic essay, “The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending.”
That belief was reinforced once again for me over Rosh Hashanah, which I spent in Tel Aviv. One conversation with a young man who has recently started to observe Shabbos sticks in my mind. Brought up in a secular home in England, he’s made large strides over the past year — a change that he attributes to the war.
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