For a special anniversary issue of Commentary, 69 authors have contributed their thoughts on what will have become of Jews and Judaism 50 years hence. John Podhoretz shares concluding reflections:
[T]hough several of the symposium respondents are deeply pessimistic about the future of Jewry, . . . no one actually envisions the Jewish people’s end in an Iranian mushroom cloud. Indeed, even those in the symposium who express disgust and alarm at the Iranian nuclear deal seem to find it impossible to look at the course of human history as it unfolds over the next half-century and see a serious possibility of a world without Jews.
That is no small thing. It is, rather, a very large thing. It suggests the influence, largely unconscious, of what is likely the most important article ever published in Commentary. In “Jewish Faith and the Holocaust,” the theologian Emil Fackenheim sought to find a way to rise above the historical calamity by posing an existential challenge to our people. “Jews,” he wrote in 1968, “are forbidden to hand Hitler posthumous victories.”
In some sense, then, “The Jewish Future” indicates that we are all—most of us—Fackenheim’s children, whether or not we have read “Jewish Faith and the Holocaust.” Even in prospect, even intellectually, even prophetically, we will not hand Hitler this posthumous victory. We do not despair of man and his world so much that we believe it can happen. And we do not despair of the God of Israel.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/concluding-thoughts-jewish-future/