The real crisis of Judaism today lies in its exclusion of modern thought

Comment published on New York Times online blog in response to Ronald Lauder, "Israel, this is not who we are," 8/14/18:

Yes. But the crisis in the Jewish world is even deeper than this. 

A century ago, there was a large and rich secular Jewish culture that might have held the key to the future of Judaism. Reform and liberal Judaisms chose not to build on it.  

Reform Judaism today does not mean anything: it is Orthodox lite with nice music and encouragement to balance the tradition-lite lifestyle (ritual commandments are optional but strongly encouraged) with anything you like. This situation became host after the Six-Day War to a broad shift to the right. This could only mean that the center of Jewish intellectual life remained outside the religion, excluded.  

Why does this matter? Most of the "secular" developments were in political philosophy and related areas. The most important figures were Freud, the philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin, and the writer Kafka. The thinking of the last century, including in art, a specialty of Mr. Lauder's, was largely political, as befits the dark and troubled times we still live in. A figure like Benjamin matters today for the same reason Emmanuel Levinas does or Giorgio Agamben. They matter for the same reason Picasso and Francis Bacon matter: they concern everyone.  

Judaism did not have to abandon this territory. To join it, rabbinical seminaries should teach philosophy, and as philosophy (not as religion).  

Israel excludes this in a different way. The stakes? Jews are leaving Judaism and no one seems to know how to stop them.