No Soul Left Behind

I’m grateful to my longtime friend and colleague Eytan Kobre for calling attention recently to my long essay in the third issue of Sapir Journal, which is devoted to the topic of ensuring American Jewish continuity. Like any writer, I hope to be read. But as much as I would have liked Mishpacha readers to see the essay, I suspect that my natural reticence would have kept me from mentioning it.

Sapir Journal is, as Rabbi Kobre noted, not an Orthodox journal. That, incidentally, was the principal attraction for me. If one wants to offer prescriptions with respect to Jewish continuity, it is much better to address them to those to whom they apply most directly. If, as per my suggestion, thousands of non-Orthodox Jews suddenly decide to seek out Torah Jews with whom to connect around their shared inheritance of Torah, I’m confident that I will be able to rustle up the requisite manpower in the Torah world on short notice.

The Maimonides Fund, which sponsors the journal, is also not Orthodox, but neither is it affiliated with any denomination. I was far from the only Orthodox writer, though I was the only one described as “Haredi.” And even among the non-Orthodox writers, there were others who argued as well that there is little hope for the Jewish future in America without a dramatic jump in basic Torah literacy. No doubt there were some articles at which I would have bristled, such as one calling for opening the doors wider on conversion. I didn’t read that one, but of those I did read, I found myself nodding enthusiastically at several points.

I never felt that I was there to add a patina of evenhandedness to the volume. I could hardly have been treated more respectfully by Felicia Herman, the managing editor of Sapir Journal and COO of the Maimonides Fund. Not only was she effusive in her praise, she also edited with a very light touch, beyond insisting that I locate the exact sources for all my quotations, and waived my initial word limit by over 1,000 words (a lot).