James Loeffler, associate professor of history at the University of Virginia and scholar-in-residence at Pro Musica Hebraica, is currently the Robert A. Savitt fellow at the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. His “The Death of Jewish Culture” was the featured monthly essay in Mosaic for May 2014.
Hating Wagner is a debilitating Jewish habit. So is loving him.
An exchange between the foremost philanthropic supporter of secular Jewish culture and the analyst of its decline.
Let me say it again: Jewish secular culture is too thin and open to support a real collective identity. So now what?