Articles

Traditional forms of civic engagement — unions, religious communities, neighborhood associations, political parties, advocacy organizations, and volunteer groups — have seen declining membership since the mid-20th century.

What lies ahead for American religion? New data on “religious stability” is raising some interesting questions. More directly, there are significant, even uncertain challenges facing American Judaism.

Fifteen theoretical models allow us to better understand the “new antisemitism.” Contemporary Jewish hatred involves hostility toward Jews that is manifested not through traditional racial or religious stereotypes but rather through opposition to Israel or globalization recasting negative references to Jews and Israel in political or conspiratorial terms.

We are finding ourselves experiencing a very different society than the one that most of us can recall from our earlier years. It is as if we have been transported to a new place and time. Many of our core beliefs and practices that described how we defined and understood who and what it was to be an American have all but disappeared.

A quarter way through the 21st Century, the religious model is confronting an array of structural and policy challenges, among them, the decline of traditional membership numbers and increasingly more diverse constituencies, both politically and religiously.

Recently, I explored on this site the Trump Effect, analyzing those generic elements that led to the two election victories of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States. Both, in earlier blog entries and in my 2021 volume covering Trump’s first term, I have studied this President’s impact on American Jewry. In this essay, we want to explore in more detail 47’s imprint on the Jewish community, especially in connection with his second term.

The ideas and policies that have defined and shaped Donald J Trump’s presidency were generated decades earlier. The “Trump Effect” has only partially been about the man and his persona, more directly, it has represented the ability of the Republican Party and a cadre of conservative think tanks to reframe the identity and ideology of Republicanism, allowing Donald Trump to emerge as its spokesperson.

In this moment, we are living “in the betweens.” Those times when societies must determine their future pathways or directions. In such a vacuum, communities often experience significant political and social disruption. Individuals encounter deep stress, even loss but also experience creative impulses navigating through these options.

Despair and resignation do not represent political strategies! Invoking the uplifting words of the William Ernest Henry from his poem, Invictus, however provides a personal way forward!

The Jewish community, long accustomed to navigating the complexities of identity, loyalty, and political allegiance, finds itself in a state of paralysis—caught between the divisive domestic politics of Donald Trump and the increasingly controversial policies of the Israeli government. This paralysis is not merely political but moral, cultural, and existential.