What New Jews (and Those Curious about Judaism) Can Do for Existing Jews

In my Mosaic essay, “The Restoration of the Jewish People.” I addressed the welcome challenge posed by an amazing contemporary phenomenon. I described that phenomenon as follows:

Millions of individuals who in the past would have been regarded as irretrievably lost to the Jewish people are now visibly in contact with it, and some of them or their descendants are actively returning to the fold. At the same time, many more persons or groups with at best very distant Jewish connections are strengthening those connections and moving closer to the Jewish people and the Jewish state.

Here I’ll take up the two responses to my essay by Hillel Halkin and Shlomo Brody, both of whom I thank for their thoughtful attention to my argument.