Choosing Survival

"This perceptive and provocative analysis of the Jewish condition in America and Israel poses a daunting challenge: `can Jews survive the end of the siege,' can they find some alternative to `the ideology of affliction' that has shaped the communal worldview throughout diaspora history" Offering a bold prescription for the ailments of contemporary Jews, the authors point to Jewish learning and sensibilities, the lessons of Orthodoxy and the attachments of religious folkways, as possible remedies. Their hope for a `literate, inspired and attractive form of Jewishness that is neither combatively Orthodox nor communally exculsivist' should command wide attention."--Jonathon D. Sarna, Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Chair, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies
"In this provocative new book, two American-born Israeli academics offer a trenchant analysis of the central dilemmas facing American and Israili Jews today. Written with unabashed candor and out of a deep personal engagement, Choosing Survival challenges contemporary Jews to renew their engagement with tradition to forge a distinctive and counter-cultural Jewish identity. Readers will be rewarded by Liebman and Susser's incisive views of contemporary realities and future Jewish possibilities."--Jack Wertheimer, professor, The Jewish Theological Seminary
"Susser and Liebman engage both their personal commitments as Jews, and their analytic insights as social scientists, to offer a challenging perspective on Jewish life and the Jewish future in Israel and the United States. Their argument--that we have entered a new era in Jewish life, one in which Jews must recognize the tensions between Judaism dn modernity if Judaism is to suvive--will engage and excite readers with interests in Israel, contemporary Jews, or modern religious identity."--Steven M. Cohen, professor, The Hebrew University
"This book is required reading for all persons dedicated to the perpetuation of Jewish peoplehood. It offers a surgical exploration of the Jewish condition in America and Israel. What a fascinating phenomenon: two scholars, passionately ocmmitted in their personal lives to Jewish survival, dispassionately challenge the fundamental premises on which both communities are grounded. They point us to a more complex and tortuous future, when the `ideology of afflicition' and the threat of war will no longer serve as the primary bonds of Jewish identity. Though they offer no panaceas, they astutely raise the critical issues and project the difficult choices prerequisite to the quest for creative survival.... This book calls on Jews to `choose life.'"--Rabbi Richard G. Hirsch, Honorary Life President, World Union for Progressive Judaism
"Written with unabashed candor and out of a deep personal enagement, Choosing Survival challenges contemporary Jews to renew their engagement with tradition to forge a distinctive and counter-cultural Jewish identity. Readers will be rewarded by Liebman and Susser's incisive views of contemporary realities and future Jewish possibilities." -- Jack Wertheimer, The Jewish Theological Seminary
"Perceptive and provocative... Offering a bold prescription for the ailments of contemporary Jews, the authors poitn to Jewish Learning and sensibilities, the lessons of Orthodoxy and the attachments of religious folkways, as possible remedies. Their hope for a literate, 'inspired and attractive form of Jewishness that is neither combatively Orthodox nor communally exclusivist' should command world attention." -- Jonathon D. Sarna, Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewis History, Chair, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University