How Lenient Should Standards for Conversion to Judaism Be?

At the end of “The Restoration of the Jewish People,” his wide-ranging and eye-opening survey of the tens of millions around the globe claiming some level of Jewish affiliation, Ofir Haivry declares that it’s time to get serious. Jewish institutions generally, he writes, and the state of Israel and its rabbis in particular, need to think strategically about how to respond to today’s changing modes of Jewish affinity.

I couldn’t agree more. But the first step is to ask, seriously, what it should mean to be Jewish in the 21st century.

Judaism has been described as many things: a culture, a people, a religion, a nationality, and more (including, according to answers given to the 2013 Pew survey of American Jews, a culinary disposition for bagels and smoked salmon or the possession of a good sense of humor). Let me here propose an existential minimum of what being Jewish should mean. It should mean that one’s Jewish affiliation not only forms a central part of one’s identity but also defines much of one’s actual way of life—one’s practice.