Tikkun Ha’am/Repairing Our People: Reimagining Liberal Judaism in America

Rabbi Salkin (Putting God on the Guest List) returns with a lackluster collection of essays, most of which are adapted from his Religious News Service column, “Martini Judaism.” Salkin frames the volume as “more than a half-century of thinking about, and struggling with, the nature of Jewish identity and Judaism in America,” and describes himself as a “Reform rabbi and author” who’s frequently felt alienated “from the accepted truths and norms of his community and... has dared to imagine something different.” But there’s not much here that’s daring: like other Jewish clergy, Salkin decries double standards leveled against Israel (“No other nation has had to argue the merit of its very existence”), considers challenges to the survival of non-Orthodox Judaism, and posits that American individualism threatens Judaism and its community structures. The work is also weakened by repetition and unsubstantiated generalizations, as when Salkin opines that non-Orthodox Jews “do not know what kind of Jews they want their children to be” or “what vocabulary of Jewish deeds, ideas, and experiences they should be learning.” While Salkin’s aim to “reclaim a countercultural narrative for modern Judaism” is laudable, this attempt never quite gets off the ground. (Jan.)