This is Not the Way: Jews, Judaism, and the State of Israel

by David J. Goldberg

Few subjects invoke such passion as the history and current situation of Jews in Western societies. David Goldberg, a progressive Rabbi with many years' experience of dealing with other faiths and other Jews, takes the most difficult issues of this fraught relationship and confronts them head on. He argues that it is wrong to equate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, that it is far more difficult to be a Muslim in twenty-first century Britain than it is to be a Jew, that Israel is far too often treated sentimentally and that the identification of Israel with the Holocaust - memorializing the latter and sacralising the former - has had baneful effects. His discussion of the perennial question, 'who is a Jew?', is equally trenchant: he rejects all strict rabbinic criteria, proposing that a Jew is simply anyone who insists that he or she is one. Forthright, challenging and witty, "This is Not the Way" will spark debate, criticism and delight in equal measure.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, History, Politics, Judaism

272 pages, Hardcover

First published May 3, 2012

About the author

Rabbi Dr. David J. Goldberg OBE is Rabbi Emeritus of The Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London, having served the congregation as Associate then Senior Rabbi since 1975. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School, Oxford University, and Trinity College, Dublin and received his Rabbinic Ordination from the Leo Baeck College in 1971.

In a full and varied career which enhanced the reputation of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue as one of the world's leading congregations, he is particularly proud of 4 'firsts':
to have been the first prominent Jew in the UK publicly to call for recognition of legitimate Palestinian rights in an article in The Times in 1978;
to have been the first rabbi to initiate dialogue meetings between Judaism, Christianity and Islam when the Regent's Park mosque opened in 1978;
to have been the first Jew to recite Kaddish in Westminster Abbey when he co-officiated at the Memorial Service for Lord Menuhin;
and to have been the first - and so far as he knows, the only - rabbi ever to have had an article in Wisden, the cricket lovers' bible, or to have been interviewed on Test Match Special!

Active in interfaith work, in 1999 he was awarded the Gold Medallion of The International Council of Christians and Jews for his "Outstanding contribution to interfaith harmony and understanding". In 2004 he was awarded an OBE for his services to interfaith work.

Well-known for his outspoken and radical views and a former chairman of the Rabbinic Conference of the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues, and co-chairman of the London Society of Jews and Christians, he has contributed regularly on Jewish and Israeli topics to all the major newspapers and journals (e.g. The Times, the Sunday Times, Observer, Guardian, Independent, Mail on Sunday, New Statesman, History Today, etc.)

He has written, or edited, several books. He co-authored "The Jewish People" (Viking 1989) with Rabbi John Rayner and the Italian translation of "To The Promised Land: A History of Zionist Thought" (Penguin 1996) won the prestigious Premio Iglesias prize in 1999 for best book in the Culture and Politics category.

"The Divided Self: Israel and the Jewish Psyche Today", was published in April 2006.

Reviews

[Denni]

Beautifully written but, more importantly humane, intelligent and informed. I might not entirely agree with every single point Rabbi Goldberg makes (though I do with more or less everything as it happens), but I am so glad to have had the opportunity to read this book and thus to find out things I didn't know and to explore others I had some sense of in more depth. Thank you to the public library service for making it possible. Highly recommended, especially for anyone with any interest in the issues surrounding Jews, Judaism, and the State of Israel (the title is very accurate!) whether Jewish or not.