Personal Life Cycle
Personal God-Given Credentials
Personal Meaning
Personal Jonah Complex
In their 2003 book Futurizing the Jews ,Tsvi Bisk and Moshe Dror established an innovative platform for a new paradigm of Jewish life in the 21st century and beyond. Among key strategies they proposed and which Tsvi Bisk furthers in his The Optimistic Jew are:
- “A space-age Jewish civilization must be based, first and foremost, on the optimal self-fulfillment and self-realization of the individual”
Between the individual and his/her Companion.
Encounter
Group process and “ethno-therapy”
Situational Groupings
The Jewish Human Connection. Toffler’s coping with Tomorrow. Synagogue as Jewish human growth center.
The goal of the Jewish community must be the individual who “recognizes that Judaism has been the manifold expression of human beings struggling and wrestling with their human problems, and he therefore can enter into the thoughts and feelings of each historical moment and come forth enriched.”
“free to draw on the riches of our past we need no longer be slaves to it. Judaism, for us, is not only a past, but a future.“
Center for the Jewish Experience
The Christian theologian, Harvey Cox, characterizes this very survival skills developed by our Jewish people centuries ago when he writes
“if he is to survive, man must be both innovative and adaptive. He must draw from the richest wealth of experience available to him and must not be bound to existing formulas for solving problem. Festivity, by breaking routine and opening us to the past, enlarges our experience and reduces our provincialism. Fantasy opens doors that merely empirical calculations ignore. it widens the possibility of innovation.”
“Jewish” Worship as Environment for Encounter
Fostering personal stability zones