Novel Service

I’ve just begun reading Peace, Justice, and Jews: Reclaiming Our Tradition, an anthology of writing about Judaism and social justice edited by Murray Polner and Stefan Merken. I’m enjoying it immensely thus far, though, interestingly, I’ve never heard of most of the contributors. By this merit alone, PJ&J carries a different vibe than its like-minded predecessors, Prophets Outcast and Wrestling With Zion, whereas the book seems less caught up in the celebrity of its contributors and more focused on the value of their ideas themselves.

But PJ&J’s not entirely without its celebrities. And with that in mind, I’d like to share a small excerpt from Susannah Heschel’s contribution, “The Loneliness of a Prophet.”

Like the Kotzker rebbe, whom he wrote about in his last, two-volume Yiddish book, my father insisted on authenticity and felt that God loves novelty. To repeat oneself, the Kotzker taught, is to commit forgery. All of us are obligated not to imitate the Judaism of our grandparents, but to create new meanings that reflect our generation. Imitating the Judaism of the past is not authenticity, but what he called “spiritual plagiarism.”

Good stuff, eh?