The Choosing People

Simon Rocker at the Jewish Chronicle has made the following comment about JPR's latest publication, "New Conceptions of Community."

“The traditional Jewish community, bounded by a combination of external hostility and limitations and internal comfort and familiarity, has had its walls battered, breached and broken, not so much by antisemitism but rather by the winds of sociological change. We are now free to come and go as we please.

“…In many respects, we are no longer a chosen people, compelled by God, or fate, or history to be part of the Jewish community, but rather a choosing people, deciding day-by-day, minute-by-minute whether or not we want our Jewishness to inform our lives.”

So writes Jonathan Boyd, executive director of the Insititute for Jewish Policy Reseach in the introduction to a collection of short essays on changing Jewish society and the challenges ahead.

Contributors to New Conceptions of Community range from chief executive of the London School of Jewish Studies Raphael Zarum to Reform executive director Rabbi Shoshana Boyd-Gelfand to Moishe House musician Joseph Finlay. Worth a look.

To see the JC post, click here. To download the publication, click here.