Secular Jewishness for Our Time edited by Barnett Zumoff and Karl D. Zukerman (hardcover)

A three part symposium by three generations of witers, educators, and cultural activists in 1938-40, 1968-69, and 1998-2000.

The first section is a collection of articles published in Yiddish during 1938-39 in Kultur un Dertsiung (Culture and Education), the Workmen's Circle's monthly journal that dealt with literary and educational aspects of Yiddish culture.  There was no intitial intention to have a symposium about secular Jewishness - it just grew, unplanned , as a point-counterpoint of views about how to preserve and reinforce Jewishness in nonreligious Jews and in their children and grandchildren.  The authors were all deeply and professionally immersed in Yiddish cultural endeavors; they represented a broad spectrum of ideological viewpoints but were united in their view that Yiddish culture was central to Jewishness.  They were all worried about how to keep secular Jews, especially children, within the fold so that they would not drift away into uninvolved assimilation.  They were not worried about losing the children to religious affiliation, for hey all felt that religion among Jews would soon die out.

The second section of the book is similar in many ways, except that the articles were published 30 years later.  The concerns expressed by the authors were much the same as before.  What was different was a subtly pervasive loss of optimism and the certainty that their way would inevitably prevail. 

The third section is a planned symposium with invited papers.  There is still a concern with finding ways to keep young secular Jews within the fold.  Their prescriptions vary: for some, the observance of traditions remains the key; for others, the key is the practice of kiuun olam, in its modern incarnation as striving to create a shener un besere velt ( a better and more beautiful world) by struggling for social and economic justice. 

The articles in this book provide a comprehensive picture of the changes that have occured over sixty years in the approach to maintaing and strengthening secular Jewishness, not only the how but also the why.