Is Judaism Becoming Irrelevant?

In the introduction to "Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism," author Doug Rushkoff explains when the early '90s Internet revolution turned into the greed-driven, dot-com rush of the late '90s, he found himself in an intellectual bind. "How could I still promote the empowering side of interactive media without pumping up a Ponzi scheme that was destined for casualties?" he writes. His answer was to turn to Judaism, not only his cultural and spiritual roots, but also what he describes as the original religion of media literacy.

Rushkoff, a self-described lapsed Jew, spent two years getting literate in Judaism by traveling around the country attending synagogues, reading the Torah and talking with Jews across the cultural and political spectrum. The result is a book in which he places Judaism within a modern context for his generation. He also argues that the religion is on the brink of becoming irrelevant because its most core value of open-ended inquiry has been obscured by an obsession with self-preservation and idolatry.

Last week, the United Jewish Appeal center in New York pulled an interview with Rushkoff off the organization's Web site, arguing that his questions about Israel were too controversial. Recently, I sat down with Rushkoff in the East Village of Manhattan to discuss how the incident has proved his point about the religion's mainstream, the marketing of so-called "Jewish chic" to 20- and 30-somethings, and what Judaism at its core means to him today.

RLH: What did you question about Israel that upset the UJA?

I'm very gentle. I preface any discussion about Israel by saying that I don't want anyone to think that I don't think Israel should be there. I do believe that Israel should there and I love Israel, but now I want to talk about whether or not we can even talk about Israel. I'm not saying we shouldn't support Israel using Torah, but what does it do to our relationship with Torah? What does it do to our relationship to God when we say God invented the Nation State? Should we use the story of Exodus to support our claim to this Nation State or does it hurt our relationship to the story of Exodus if we're using Torah to prove that we own a piece of land? Did God come up with the Nation State or was it the Treaty of Versailles?

This experience with the UJA ties into your whole criticism about mainstream Judaism.

Judaism as I see it is the invention of conversation and a way of conversing about typical things. What are we here for? How do we deal with one another? I think it's become too concretized. I think Jews have idols now and I think Israel has become an idol. That's a problem for Judaism and it's a problem for Israel. If we want a living nation, we have to find ways to support and nourish the living nation. The worst thing for the preservation of the religion and the preservation of that nation is this idolatrous relationship to Torah and to Israel.

What's your Jewish background?

I grew up in Queens, Larchmont and Scarsdale. My family was classical Reform. I'm circumcised. I got Bar Mitvahed. We did Passover. We did Hanukkah. Unfortunately, the way Reform Judaism works is that you're done with Jewish education after your Bar Mitzvah, and then you don't really come back to it until you're married and have a kid. Because I'm a thinker and writer, I've thought about spirituality and religion throughout and my work has been informed by a true Jewish outlook which is iconoclastic, towards literacy and intellectual inquiry.

Why do you think that a lot of lapsed Jews have turned away from Judaism?

It's become very closed off, racist and ethnocentric. Fundamentalists are now running this religion. Most people like me haven't tried to do anything officially Jewish because we've thrown out the baby with the bathwater. We say the fundamentalists are in charge. The last place you're going to have an intelligent conversation about God or religion or Torah or Israel is in a Jewish organization because they're too afraid to talk about it.