Reformed to Death
Leon J. Podles on the Future of Feminized Liberal Judaism
Jews have for millennia felt the temptation to be like other peoples, to be like the nations, to have gods they can see and touch, to have a king, not to stand out and be despised by the Gentiles. It is a temptation, because God has chosen them to be set apart from all other nations, to be his holy people, for his own mysterious purposes, until the time comes when the Messiah shall unite the Gentiles and the Jews in their historical reality. Until that time, assimilation is a temptation—and a temptation that will lead to the disappearance of the Jews who want to become like Gentiles.
Over the past two centuries, some Jews have been tempted to imitate liberal Protestantism in abandoning the unique role of the male, especially of the father. Liberal Judaism (Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist) has succeeded in doing this, and thus, like liberal Protestantism, liberal Judaism is disappearing.
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Leon J. Podles holds a Ph.D. in Old English and Old Icelandic from the University of Virginia and is a senior editor of Touchstone. His latest book is Losing the Good Portion: Why Men Are Alienated from Christianity (St. Augustine's Press, 2020). He and his wife Mary (author of the Touchstone column "A Thousand Words") are the parents of six children. He resides in Baltimore, Maryland.
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