Survival and ritual are the soil of greatness, but by themselves they are meager things. If Jewish communal survival and common traditional practices are not allied to a quest for justice, then the Jewish future will be a dreary one. A renegade, somewhat anti-Semitic, but nonetheless great Jew once said that men make history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing. The Jewish future will depend on what Jews do, however challenging the circumstances.
Mitchell Silver received his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut in 1980 and is a Senior Lecturer in philosophy at the University of Massachusetts/Boston where he has taught since 1982. He is the author of A Plausible God (2006) and Respecting the Wicked Child: A Philosophy of Secular Jewish Identity and Education (1998). He was the Educational Director of the I.L. Peretz School of the Brookline Workmen's Circle from 1992 to 2009 and was the Cultural Director of Camp Kinderland from 1989 to 2006. Silver writes and speaks frequently on health care ethics, Jewish secularism, and Middle East politics.
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