How Leftism Supplanted Judaism and Subverted Israel and Zionism Under 'Tikkun Olam' -- Social Justice with a Perverse and Baseless Religious Veneer

Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten

Jonathan Neumann has written perhaps the seminal book on how modern Jewry has supplanted its traditional values and principles with Leftism, based on a perverse, sophistic reading of the concept of tikkun olam, "healing the world," that demands devotion to social justice as the highest good and organizing principle of the Jewish religion.

By way of background, Neumann is a graduate of Cambridge University and the London School of Economics. He has written for various American, British, and Israeli publications, was the Tikvah Fellow at Commentary magazine, and has served as assistant editor at Jewish Ideas Daily

I had Neumann on the podcast to discuss the triumph of tikkun olam-based Leftism as central to modern non-Orthodox Judaism, why Jewish social justice renders Jews qua Jews meaningless, the systematic debunking of this ideology, the ramifications for Israel and U.S. politics and much more.

What We Discussed

• Defining tikkun olam, and its link to social justice, leftism and Kantian ethics
• How tikkun olam became the predominant ethos of non-Orthodox Jewry in the U.S. in a mere 40 year period -- and its radical roots
• The inextricable link between tikkun olam theology and the evolution of the Reform Jewish movement and its relation to the Social Gospel
• The perversion of Jewish values and principles by those who have supplanted the religion with Leftism -- based in a textually unsupported, fabricated concept of tikkun olam that Neumann systematically debunks
• Why Neumann argues that "Jewish social justice effectively has no need for Jews qua Jews"
• The correlation between tikkun olam ideology and anti-Zionism, in contrast to American Jewish leftism's historical affinity towards Israel
• Why and how Israel in U.S. politics has become effectively a one-party, Republican, issue -- and the conflicting trends of the growing Orthodox Jewish community and the declining non-Orthodox Jewish community
• Why Jews have historically gravitated toward the political Left

Further Reading

• Show Notes & Transcript

Thanks for Listening!

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