This is not a post, dear reader, so much as a referral. On November 5 Tablet Magazine ran a feature the editors there asked me to prepare. It can be accessed at tabletmagazine.com. I foretold of this in my October 2 post, “Once Again, Jews Is News.”
I sent my copy in on October 1, right when the latest Pew poll broke into the news, but I had written it before that news broke. But it took Tablet nearly five weeks to run it. Also, I had titled it “Broken Triangle: A Provocation for the Sake of Heaven”, and I suggested that subtitle to indicate that the language was, to use Dean Acheson’s old phrase, a bit “clearer than the truth”–in other words, if you don’t know that phrase, stylized for maximum impact. The prior phrase “provocation for the sake of heaven”–which transliterates as “makhloket b’shaym shamayim”–of course has a similar purpose. Those who recognize the Hebrew will know that it is a standard rabbinic indulgence within the pilpul framework that allows writers to express an extreme logical view just to get the essence of a topic out on the table, so as to invite responses. In the rabbinic world, as in the Socratic one, the assumption is that all worthy knowledge following Divine revelation is the product of intersubjectivity, not solipsisms.
But the editors, as is an editor’s prerogative, changed my title to something a lot more prosaic. No matter: The roughly 4,000 words that follow are mine. And they came up with a nifty graphic; kudos to the Tablet art-and-design staff.
If you found “Jews Is News” and the discussion that ensured here interesting, and/or if you found Jewcentricity worth your while, you’ll probably be into this new one, too. I meant for it to create a stir and no little discomfort in some quarters, as a goad to some actual thinking about this subject. Early returns suggest at least some modest success.
Finally just note please that I do not intend to write anything more on this topic for quite a while; maybe never. It’s too enervating.
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