Dreaming About Jewish Peoplehood

A Critical Exploration of Jewish Identity in the 21st Century

Rabbi Talia Avnon-Benveniste

.

airb&b's #WeAccept campaign. Super Bowl 2017

What qualities do I preserve?

How many can fit in one jar?

How long will we last?

“The fellow members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them.Yet in the minds of each, lives the image of the communion...Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity or genuineness, but in the style in which they are imagined.”

Benedict Anderson

(Australian Jews are being urged to answer the question about religion in the 2016 Census).

Who are we and what is our story?

And what stories lie here?

The story/ies of the Jewish People, consist of:

• Historical memory

• Hebrew and Jewish languages

• The world of Jewish values

• Israel as a multidimensional concept

• Jewish creation and creativity

• Jewish practices and spirituality

We are the narrators

of the Jewish story

More than the Jewish people have

kept their story;

their story has kept the Jewish

people.