M ichael Steinhardt is at it again and it’s time to act: Perhaps he should be reported for racism and triumphalism to the American Civil Liberties Union.
In an interview with the JTA the billionaire hedge fund manager and funder of Birthright Israel reprised his previously stated view that “the time of Jewish history that we have to devote far more energy to is the last 300 years…. Jews have accomplished so much so inexplicably out of proportion to their numbers in these 300 years and it’s one of the great failures of Jewish education that that’s not focused on at all.”
After the Pew report on American Jewry was released a few years back reporting that an astonishing 94 percent of Jews are “proud to be Jewish ” Steinhardt suggested that what they’re in fact proud of is “secular Jewish achievement and accomplishment.” That being so he wrote
It is time to invest more seriously in educational endeavors that reinforce it and build upon it. Simply put for a Jew to be Jewishly educated today he or she must know the history of the past 300 years. We must learn and understand our achievements and explore the background and basis of our success. Was it DNA? Social cues? Pressure from persecution? Education? We need to educate more thoroughly in this area than we have in the past.
