The Jews: Next Year in Which Jerusalem?

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he could not eat. Today, says Podhoretz, he retains no traces of the old taboos, but many sophisticated Jews who consider themselves liberated find that the taboos still affect them. On another level of reaction, Jewish Author Milton Himmelfarb has admitted that he takes a second look whenever he sees a Mercedes or a Volkswagen in the parking lot of a synagogue. What is taken for granted in the surrounding Gentile culture may make a Jew feel like an alien. "You can feel just like any other American on the Fourth of July," notes a Jew from Texas, but "you are vividly reminded that you are different" amid the ubiquitous Christmas decorations festooning American streets in December. It remains true, however, that many Jews relish the sense of unique fraternity that arises from this differentness. There is a note of pride in the old Yiddish saying Schwer zu sein a Yid (It is tough to be a Jew).

COMMUNITY OF FAITH JUDAISM

Partly because of such difficulties, cultural Jewishness is not enough for many Jews. A number of critics feel that it is dangerously hollow. "It makes being a Jew the religion," contends Jewish Writer Will Herberg of Drew University. "By its standards, you can be a very good Jew without faith." Herberg, once a Communist, represents the middle of the Jewish spectrum: those Jews who insist that faith must underpin any lasting sense of Jewish identity.

Theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, professor of ethics and mysticism at the Conservatives' Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan, is the godfather and poet of this school of thought. He is also one of its stricter interpreters of Halakhah (The Law, derived from the Hebrew for to follow), the Jewish code of conduct and observance. For Heschel, who lost his first wife and children in the Nazi terror, Judaism is "the track of God in the wilderness of oblivion." The task, he says, is "being what we are, namely Jews; by attuning our own yearning to the lonely holiness in this world, we will aid humanity more than by any particular service we may render."

The mystical piety that animates Heschel's work is an inheritance from his forebears, a prominent Hasidic family in Poland. It is this quality of Hasidism—the 18th century revolt against the aridities of rabbinic legalism—that attracts many younger Jews. Although some are not quite willing to accept the full ritual observance that goes with Hasidism, they do seek to share the Hasidic experience of ecstatic encounter with God. Indeed, some carry it to very untraditional lengths. In Beverly Hills, Calif., on Yom Kippur, a 17-year-old high school student declined to join in the common prayers in his synagogue, explaining, "I decided I have my own concept of God as something beyond the natural world, and I don't think it is right for me to use other people's words when I could try to use my own thoughts. I can relate to God anywhere I want to."

In a recent issue of the new Jewish journal Sh'ma (TIME, March 6), a young woman named Joan Koehler relates a remarkable chronicle of conversion. Raised without a faith, she found Christian churches too dogmatic, was attracted by the Jewish belief that total truth "is not within man's reach." Despite the endless intricacies of Jewish law that daunt most interested outsiders—and many