I HAVE CONSIDERED Jenna Weissman Joselit to be my teacher for a long time. In her writings and lectures she unfailingly contributes a perspective or an insight that is original or uniquely discerning. When she speaks, we must listen seriously, for chances are we will learn from her something we would not have learned on our own.

So when she shares her alarm about the current Jewish condition in the United States, we must ask whether we, too, should feel alarmed. As she observes the present condition, noticing both the vibrancy and drift upon which many contemporary observers have commented, she gives voice to the question that nags at us all: ‘Does it constitute a decided rupture with the past, an entirely new calibration of matters Jewish, or is it simply an expression of tradition in a new register?’ Though her formulation may be neutral, she is not neutral with respect to the answer. According to her observations, contemporary American Jews ‘relish [their] idiosyncrasies and crotchets’; they ‘delight in the erasure of boundaries rather than their maintenance’; they ‘display … a knowing and ironic sensibility’; they ‘question … [and] even subvert … once regnant verities’; they ‘replac[e] consensus with fragmentation’. Summing up her evaluation of this condition, shec declares: ‘there is something about the modern American Jewish experience, circa 2007, that strikes me as downright revolutionary rather than evolutionary’. Clearly, in her opinion, this is not a good thing, not ‘good for the Jews’.

I, for one, would certainly not dismiss the question. Nor am I sure that her alarm is unfounded. But it strikes me that her (tentative?) conclusion is a hasty one, based, perhaps, upon too short-term a view of Jewish history. For most of the examples she calls upon to illustrate or bolster her alarm, I can think of analogous historical examples that work to strengthen Judaism and the community of adherents. In her critique of Vanessa Ochs, in particular, I think she arrives at her conclusion too quickly. Do we live in a period of flux and uncertainty? Undoubtedly we do. Is what we witness entirely different from what came before? The answer is not so clear.