Intellectual Judaism: uniting all Jews among themselves and with Christians

 Two most common discussion topics among the Jews are (1) the assimilation – why it is so and how to stop it, and (2) the anti-Semitism – why it is on the rise and how to stop it. And Intellectual Judaism – not as a one more spiritual stream in Judaism but rather as Jewish Torah-based way of reasoning – is a key to understanding what should be done to lessen the burden of these challenges.

(1)    The assimilation – why it is so and how to stop it

The Jews begin assimilating when they stop seeing the spiritual beauty and practical usefulness of their religion. They stop seeing the spiritual beauty and practical usefulness of their religion when

n  A rabbi stops being a teacher helping the Jews understand how to tailor the Torah guidance to unique Jewish individual lives - and begins acting as a promoter and an enforcer of a set of rituals established by his rabbinical community (Haredim, Orthodox, Reform, Mizrahi, Renewal …)

n  A rabbi is afraid of proving the merits of Jewish work for everybody, not just for the Jews themselves, as the Chosen in this God’s world

n  A rabbi confines the Jewish world only to the confines of synagogue, family and Torah study leaving the rest of Jewish life to be shaped by non-Jewish spiritual powers    

n  A rabbi treats a contemporary highly educated fellow Jew as a spiritual pupil unable to study the Torah and unable to tailor it to his own unique life circumstances himself.

If all that is in place, a Jew begins seeing his Jewishness only through the lens of history and tradition – not through the lens of his unique individual life in all his social, political, professional and community involvements. And that is the beginning of assimilation.

Let’s hope that the rabbis themselves take the lead in addressing all these challenges by organizing a non-denominational group of rabbis with the goal of finding the unifying fundamentals of Jewish morality for all Jews and for the entire Judeo-Christian civilization while preserving the fundamental need for various Jewish competing spiritual streams.  

(2)    The anti-Semitism – why it is on the rise and how to stop it 

In the countries of Judeo-Christian civilization, the anti-Semitism is on the rise when Jewish leaders encourage, support or promote the government actions which are contrary to the Christian beliefs of the Christian majority. And some Jewish leaders are “guilty” of that. They promote such anti-Christian things as abortion on demand, spiritual equality of traditional and homosexual families, prohibition of religious principles in legislative work, and many other anti-Christian things. Of course, the Christian majority is unhappy and express its unhappiness in various forms which we the Jews label as anti-Semitism.

From the very beginning, the anti-Semitism was fueled by misunderstanding of the Torah/Bible concept of the Jews being the Chosen. The non-Jews treated this concept as a Jewish belief to be better than everybody else – not to be Chosen, as it is in the Torah, for a difficult work of helping the others understand the God’s design for the entire world codified in the Torah.

Let’s hope that our Jewish leaders understand all that and would work with the Christian leaders to repair all that as apart of a Jewish mission of the “repairing the world”.  

----------------------

American Jews and Christians are spiritually disunited, and this disunity makes defending and preserving our Judeo-Christian morals in public life difficult. How to strengthen the Bible-based common foundation in our own defense?  You may find more on this in the books on “intellectual Judaism” by Vladimir Minkov and in his publications at

https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B077XH9WZW

or at

http://www.intellectualjudaismjewishidentityincontemporaryjudeochristian.world/