Can Judaism Be Saved |
Arthur Green, Can Judaism Be Saved: Its Future After Gaza (Teaneck, NJ: Ben Yehuda Press, 2025) pp. 139.
It seems that the Israeli election will be the moment for a reckoning for the pogroms of October 7th, the events of October 8th – – the eruption of anti-Israel and antisemitic protests that began before Israel had even responded in Gaza – and the Gaza war.
Much consideration has been given to the rise of antisemitism. It surely has come to dominate the agenda of Jewish organizations in the diaspora and in Israel and the conversations around the Shabbat table and between friends in synagogues and places where Jews gather. It is an urgent concern in universities and among scholars.
The question of the political implications of Gaza and its aftermath is of international concern. The relationship of diaspora Jews toward the State of Israel and especially its government is discussed in fora large and small and in families between the generations even dividing husbands and wives, parents and children. Much less consideration is given to the implications for Judaism of what has just befell the Jewish people and what Jews have said and done.
That is what makes Arthur Green’s work so important.
Green is a unique figure, a scholar of towering reputation, his studies of Hasidism and his theological works are widely read and even more widely respected. His scholarly work, now routinely published in Hebrew as well as English, has gained an important following in Israel among the non-rigidly Orthodox and religious seekers who are searching for an alternative to the current posture of Israeli and American Judaism.
But Green is more than a scholar. Twice, he left the comfort of distinguished academic institutions – the University of Pennsylvania and Brandeis – to lead liberal Rabbinical seminaries – RRC, it is pre anti-Zionist phase, and Boston Hebrew College – believing that if liberal Jews had differently trained rabbis, they could attract liberal Jews to Judaism, An activist even in his youth, he was the founder almost sixty years ago of Havurat Shalom, a........