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Jewish Hipsters Exist

Commentary belatedly discovers

by
Ari M. Brostoff
June 23, 2009

Commentary has made a discovery in its new July/August issue (not yet available online): there are young urban liberal Jews in America. (Commentary has apparently not, however, discovered the nonprofit called Reboot, which is devoted to bringing young urban liberal Jews together at secret retreats in Park City, Utah, and which the article, titled “The Judaism Rebooters,” does not mention.) You might spot them at the “never-ending dance-and-drug parties known as raves,” or know them by their occasional use of Xanax, the stalwart magazine says. They are “scandalized by public indifference to global warming” and “offended by George W. Bush.” They even think that Jews are “analogous” to other people, and that being Jewish is “the equivalent of being black or Latino or gay or Native American.” And the worst part? They’re “not alienated, either from Jewish culture or from the secular world”—in fact, they want to “throw open the gates of Jewish culture to new ways of thinking.” All this will fail, says Commentary, because “the secular temptation” to be actively Jewish and still a person of one’s time has failed “in every generation.” That must be why there are no urban liberal Jews left on God’s green earth, except for the ones in this article.

Commentary [Official site]

Ari M. Brostoff is Culture Editor at Jewish Currents.