Is Judaism relevant

I once asked a professional and well known teacher, for some teaching advice – “make the classes relevant to the lives of your students!”

Rabbi Jacobs, a martial arts expert and a Rabbi to Israeli inmates speaks about the class he would give in prison and somehow the prisoners seemed not so interested until it came to the part on thefts – here they had great challenges to the Jewish law-books assessment of crimes – I leant from that, he said “always speak on a subject of interest to your crowd!”

If Judaism is relevant or not, is really the underlying question beneath our exceptionally turbulent relationship with it.

“You are a minority amongst the nations” says God.

And it is this minority status that has always caused self-doubt.

When one is part of the vast sea of humanity, they question not if they are relevant, for they are following the herd, so they assume their lifestyle is chic.

However, when your lifestyle is different from the herd, you need to ask yourself, are you the odd one out for a good reason?

The answer can truly be discerned today – looking back, as they say “hindsight is 20/20” hence having integrated fully into every modern culture, we can say beyond a shadow of a doubt, first and foremost “the herd is heading off the cliff!”