To Be a Jew Today

A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People

De: Noah Feldman

Narrado por: Noah Feldman

A leading public intellectual’s timely reckoning with how Jews can and should make sense of their tradition and each other.

What does it mean to be a Jew? At a time of worldwide crisis, venerable answers to this question have become unsettled. In To Be a Jew Today, the legal scholar and columnist Noah Feldman draws on a lifelong engagement with his religion to offer a wide-ranging interpretation of Judaism in its current varieties. How do Jews today understand their relationship to God, to Israel, and to each other—and live their lives accordingly?

Writing sympathetically but incisively about diverse outlooks, Feldman clarifies what’s at stake in the choice of how to be a Jew, and discusses the shared “theology of struggle” that Jews engage in as they wrestle with who God is, what God wants, or whether God exists. He shows how the founding of Israel has transformed Judaism itself over the last century—and explores the ongoing consequences of that transformation for all Jews, who find the meaning of their Jewishness and their views about Israel intertwined, no matter what those views are. And he examines the analogies between being Jewish and belonging to a large, messy family—a family that often makes its members crazy, but a family all the same. Written with learning, empathy and clarity, To Be a Jew Today is a critical resource for listeners of all faiths.

©2024 Noah Feldman (P)2024 Recorded Books

The authors, warm and passionate reading of his book kept me going through a lot of very dense material. He is fantastic.

This book is encyclopedic, overwhelming in many ways, and most profoundly enriching as a human being, and as a Jew. It’s kindness and embrace of every single type of Jew, it’s notion that to be Jewish is to be all of the above, is a profound and heartening take away. The combination of one of the finest minds in the world with what is clearly one of the finest hearts in the world is very powerful

Really thought-provoking

My mind is reeling from all the ideas presented here. I want to read it all over again!

Struggling with Judaism

Noah Feldman has written a book that captures and confronts most of the issues that face contemporary Jews. Clearly a lot of the struggles are his own and I’m sure that he will continue to struggle with them for years to come. I wish him success
For the rest of us (Jews and others) reading this book will give you perspective and much to think about

Extraordinary Insights and Humanity.

Noah Feldman tackles a hot button issue - what it means to be both an American and a Jew in today’s highly charged and culturally divisive ethno-political climate - with his characteristic grace, honesty, and intelligence, in this exciting and deeply interesting personal volume. He allows all the prominent ideas to exist and be heard here (without prejudice), while remaining respectful to the sanctity of these different points of view and paths forward - including his own such suggestions.

In the very best way, it feels more like an optimistic conversation one would have at a “Human Be-In” during the 60’s and 70’s (when we were - as Americans - seemingly more open to seeing and hearing each other as good humans than we may be today) than an informative tome on what we are, what challenges us, what we send forth as a country and culture, and what can be (prayerfully) the best of us, as a people and society today. Yet,the book is all of these things, and much more. And I find that to be, definitively - past, present, and future - a very optimistic and blessed way to look forward.

I read AND listened to the book, and so I heard Feldman’s heart in accompaniment with the information consumed; and that is a worthy and powerful companion to the information and ideas shared. I encourage all good people of faith, purpose, progress, and hope to do same.