A Death Greatly Exaggerated

James Loeffler has written wonderfully about Jewish music, and he clearly cares about Judaism. But his notion of the death of Jewish culture seems as misguided as the belief that “Jewish culture” will save us.

Loeffler’s expectations are certainly lofty: he wants “a self-consciously modern, public culture, rooted in the unique civilization that gave it birth and formed its voice, and expressive of a thick, expansive, and holistic identity.” Kafka, who famously wrote in his diary, “What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself,” would obviously be excluded, but so might King Solomon, who flirted with idolatry and who, in the works that tradition attributes to him, often seems divided against himself. Goodbye, Ecclesiastes.

Writers and artists don’t by themselves constitute “a culture”—they are like individual words that somebody else comes along and turns into a sentence and finds a grammar for, usually after they’re dead. But Loeffler does not really distinguish between individuals and institutions, and that gives his argument an abstract quality at odds not only with Judaism but, frankly, with human existence.