Heneinu*
Fein, Leonard
Heneinu* Where Are We? The Inner Life of America's Jews by Leonard Fein Harper and Rem, 1988 329 pp, $1995 Reviewed by Michael Berenbaum Several years ago, Amos Oz—the distinguished Israeli...
...On the contrary, a love of Israel and an appreciation of its significance for Jewish history and for American Jews permeates every page...
...Zionists will be most disturbed by this work...
...Fein emphasizes a non-romanticized view of Israel, one that has the power to inspire without overlooking recent failures: the occupation of the West Bank, the war in Lebanon, the Pollard affair, Irangate and the Palestinian uprising...
...Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer will be appalled by this book...
...For three generations, American Jews lived off the experience of others...
...To put it bluntly, there can be no authentic Judaism in America that is not an American Judaism...
...Torah, midrash, Talmud and halacha are an expression of our people's encounter with divinity and history...
...For the second generation, true Judaism was found in the world of their parents, a culture the offspring abandoned in order to assimilate...
...Despite the critical importance of the Holocaust, most American Jews are neither survivors nor children of survivors...
...He is currently the project manager (acting) of the U.S...
...Fein's Where Are We...
...We "are not merely Jews in America, but Jews of America...
...Despite the brilliance of this work, my wife, Linda Bayer (an author and professor of English) complained that insight was occasionally clouded by cumbersome prose...
...The third generation hired professionals to enact a Jewish life they were unwilling to lead...
...A generation ago, we read articles entitled: "The Vanishing American Jew" or "The Ever-Dying People...
...Fein completes the spiritual revolution initiated by Mordechai Kaplan...
...Who, then, will Fein please...
...Neo-conservatives, who wonder when Jews will finally enter the world of realpolitik and vote their interests as a privileged class, will also find this work disturbing...
...Michael Berenbaum is the Hymen Goldman adjunct lecturer m theology at Georgetown University...
...In Where Are We...
...The book is bound to provoke controversy because it invokes an idiosyncratic "we" and speaks in the name of this "we" to world Jewry...
...Fein cautions us that if American Jewish life is only the voyage of the damned, it may not be able to sustain itself...
...As readers of MOMENT so well know, Fein is not uncritical of Israel...
...Fein is also bound to upset Orthodox Jews, especially those who seek to live a segregated existence...
...The people are the center of the Jewish tale...
...For the immigrants, real Jewishness was what they left behind in Europe...
...The Inner Life of America's Jews Leonard Fein rejects this depiction of Jewish life...
...He has nothing to say to those whose Jewish lives remain untainted by the experience of America or whose encounter with this country is untouched by their Judaism...
...For some, Jewishness was rooted in the Holocaust and in Israel, in the experience of Jews elsewhere...
...Though he writes of God and tradition, he considers the Jewish people the central text...
...A brief catalogue of those who will be upset by Fein's work may reveal its greatest virtues...
...No, Fein's premise is not anti-Israel...
...He has written powerfully and persuasively to those of us who choose to live in America, to participate fully in American life not only without denying our Jewishness— but as Jews...
...Holocaust Memorial Museum...
...Fein celebrates American Jewry's coming of age, the renaissance of American Jewish life over the past two decades...
...The Inner Life of America's Jews by Leonard Fein Harper and Rem, 1988 329 pp, $1995 Reviewed by Michael Berenbaum Several years ago, Amos Oz—the distinguished Israeli writer—addressed a meeting held at the General Assembly of Jewish Federations, at which he argued that Israel was the central drama of contemporary Jewish life, Israelis the principal actors and American Jews an appreciative audience at best, sitting in the orchestra section of the theater or in private boxes high above the stage...
...Fein demonstrates that neo-conservatives have not made significant inroads into the American Jewish community...
...For American Jews full participation in Israel is but a plane ride away, yet only 60,000 American Jews—roughly one percent— have bought a one-way ticket and made aliyah...
...He understands the earthly Jerusalem as he reveres the mystic "Jerusalem of Gold...
...However, Fein offers little comfort to classical Zionists and their pretentious American supporters who comfortably parade as Zionists while living in New York or Los Angeles, and who seem to reject the integrity of their own Jewish lives in America...
...I myself had barely noticed...
...He treats politics as vocation and argues for a creative synthesis of Jewish interests and Jewish values...
...Without demeaning the role of Israel or our infatuation with it, he details the authenticity and inner spiritual strength of American Jews, at home in America and at peace with their Judaism...
...joins Charles Silberman's A Certain People as a mature expression of a confident community willing to say heneinu, here we are and here we will stay...
...American Jews have chosen not to become Israelis...
...The dream of "next year in Jerusalem" sustains a people in exile yearning for a homeland...
...She cited, for example, a compound sentence (pages 226227) that is 216 words long, has 21 prepositional phrases, 15 "ands," 11 full clauses and six subordinate clauses...
...Fein the writer would have benefitted greatly from the sharp pen of Fein the editor...
...Fein will also have little to say to American Jews who choose to remain vicarious Jews, whose Jewish commitment and community is energized by another people's story...
...Denizens of two worlds, we are at home in both...
Vol. 13 • December 1988 • No. 9
