To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People
By Noah Feldman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Writer and legal scholar Noah Feldman’s new book To Be a Jew Today is an extraordinary and unique work that demands to be read by all who want to understand the complexity of the Jewish people—where we have been, where we are today and, crucially, where we may be heading. Virtually every chapter is worthy of careful reflection.

In the first section, Feldman, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, eschews traditional Jewish denominations of Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist. Instead, he establishes an innovative foundation for the rest of the book by identifying four distinct Jewish attitudes toward God: Traditionalists, the belief that “God’s authority is primary, primordial, and absolute,” an attribute that describes many haredi groups; Evolutionists, the belief that “the rabbis, not God, are in charge of the law’s interpretation, thus capable of evolution,” which encompasses some Modern Orthodox thought; Progressives, the belief “in a divine moral order whose eternal truths of justice and love unfold in progress through history, rather than being fixed in unchanging authority,” which describes much of liberal Jewish thinking; and Godless Jews, a “state of struggling to deny God,” including those who follow a Marxist or secular humanist ideology.

The second, extraordinarily timely section, deals with how these four types of Jews relate to Zionism and Israel. In Feldman’s view, for all four of his categories, in very different ways, “Israel has become a defining component of Jewishness itself.”

This broad assertion is meant to be descriptive, but it is more correctly aspirational, especially in terms of the younger generation whose connection to Israel has undeniably weakened. Progressives, Feldman notes, are most challenged by the political situation in Israel as its dual Jewish and democratic identity is increasingly in tension. Of particular importance is his examination of Traditionalists and Evolutionists, especially the Religious Zionists, given the outsized influence they have exerted in recent years on Israel’s domestic and foreign policies.

The third section, on Jewish peoplehood, grapples with difficult and complex concepts and seeks to answer the age-old question of who is inside and outside the Jewish tent. Not a race, or a nation, or a religion, Feldman defines the Jewish people as most resembling “a large extended family.” His ambition is not only to help us answer the question of who a Jew is but also, more importantly, why be a Jew. 

To answer that question, Feldman draws on the biblical story of Jacob, who grappled all night with a divine entity and survived, only to be renamed Israel. Subsequently, he is embraced by his brother Esau despite their fraught history. To be a Jew, Feldman posits, is both to struggle with and embrace God, Israel and our people.

The conscientious reader who grapples with the wealth of material and ideas in this book, clearly a labor of love for Feldman, no doubt will be enriched by it.   

Martin J. Raffel served for 27 years as senior vice president at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.