Jewish Questions in the NY Times Magazine

In a Q&A with Jewish billionaire philanthropist Edgar Bronfman, Sr. NY Times writer Deborah Soloman (could that sound any more Jewish?) gets down to the Jewish Issues and philosophy.

"As the former head of Seagram and a billionaire philanthropist who has spent much of his fortune battling anti-Semitism worldwide, you have just written a book, “Hope, Not Fear,” that argues for a kind of neo-Judaism that loosens up the rules of observance, welcomes converts and has nothing to do with synagogue. I don’t know that I would call it neo-Judaism. The Jewish part will remain, but it’s our attitude that has to change. Instead of shunning people who marry out, we need to welcome them. I think that if we want to grow Judaism, we have to accept interfaith marriage for what it is.

In your book, you seek to define Judaism as something besides religious belief. I don’t believe in the God of the Old Testament, but I am happy with my Judaism, without that.

If you take the spiritual element out of Judaism, what is left? Some would say the rest is just archaeology, bones in the desert. That’s their problem; that’s not my problem. What we have left is our ethics, our morals. It was our people who developed the Ten Commandments, and civilizations all over the world are based on the Ten Commandments. Whoever wrote that — and we assume it was Moses — had a great deal of wisdom.

Why do you give your money to Jewish causes instead of broader social causes? There are not that many of us in the Jewish world who understand that we are in crisis. We are not in crisis because of anti-Semitism; we are in crisis because we are disappearing through assimilation."