BURN YOUR SIDDUR AWARD NOMINEE: During my trip I finally finished Douglas Rushkoff's modern-Jewish manifesto "Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism," and I deliver a bit of a split verdict: about one-third of what Rushkoff writes I wholeheartedly agree with, have been saying myself for years, and am relieved someone else finally put into words. The other two-thirds, to put it kindly, I found to be complete and utter nonsense.
Which isn't to say I didn't find the book thought-provoking; I certainly did. I was encouraged to read it by a pair of articles by the author- one in the New York Times and the other in New York Press- in which he made several arguments that I'm used to making myself- that the Jewish community puts way too much emphasis on "sky is falling" scare tactics related to intermarriage and assimilation, that synagogues and federations are applying typical marketing techniques and essentially turning Judaism into a "brand," and that there's a horrible over-reliance in Jewish communities on money and fundraising. When the author repeats these arguments in the book he presents them even more forcefully and eloquently, and I applaud him for that.
It's the rest of his arguments, however, where we part company. Rushkoff's reading of Jewish history and scripture is that the main tenets of the faith are not God, Torah, and Israel, but rather (as he repeats a few dozen times) "iconoclasm, abstract monotheism, and social justice." And therefore, since most of modern Judaism rejects his interpretation of the tradition, the entire faith must be torn down and built up again- essentially, Rushkoff believes that we must destroy Judaism in order to save it.
Rushkoff's interpretations of history and scripture are questionable, to say the least, and he repeatedly argues that experts are "unanimous" or "near-unanimous" that, say, almost none of the events in the Torah actually happened as written. And there's also his anti-Zionism, as well as a disturbing disdain for any and all Orthodox Jews, whom he calls "fundamentalists," making no distinctions between Modern Orthodox Americans and radical West Bank settlers.
Rushkoff's solution is to start a new tradition known as "Open Source Judaism," of which he himself may very well be the only member. Which is probably a good thing; if Open Source Judaism ever took off it I could only imagine it would be every bit as obnoxious and self-righteous as the Open Source computer-programming movement from which it gets its name.
I merely disagree with Rushkoff on this stuff; I'm not about to subject him to the vitriol that he's already suffered from various quarters of the Blogosphere and elsewhere. So his blog will stay on my blogroll; however, in the interest of fairness and balance, here's an anti-"Nothing Sacred" fisking that's generally representative of the arguments against his book.