How Academics Slant Their Study Matter

A new book has just been published:

DYNAMIC BELONGING
Contemporary Jewish Collective Identities
Edited by Harvey E. Goldberg, Steven M. Cohen, and Ezra Kopelowitz

It's expensive. Hardback copy costs $95.00.

It suggests that "while distinctive Judaic approaches and practices have evolved" in the American Jewish and Israel societies, "parallels also exist". The book "offers studies of substantive and creative aspects of Jewish belonging" and also "explores the fluid and dynamic nature of identity building among Jews".

I am not an expert in all aspects of the book's subjects, by far, so I zeroed in on something I am familar with in Section II: Diverse Attempts at Constructing Jewish Sub-Cultures in Israel and the United States and found this as
Chapter 5.

Fundamentalist or Romantic Nationalist? Israeli Modern Orthodoxy by Shlomo Fischer

Shlomo is a left-leaning Orthodox humanist, connected to Van Leer, who founded Yesodot, which has rejected an educational tool I suggested: the Declaration of the State of Israel as a page of Talmud, with a "Rashi and a "Tosefot" commentaries representing two variants on the religious Zionist approach. I guess no right-of-center outlook is better than sharing.

That one article, among a plurality of Diaspora-oriented articles, is the sole discussion of one pof the more dynamic and robust Jewish identity issues in today's Jewish world.

Academic bias?

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