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F

ifty years ago, a new kind of book 
appeared in the Jewish world: a 
practical, hands-on guide for how to 
do Jewish things. The First Jewish Catalog: 
A Do-It-Yourself Kit provided advice and 
encouragement to readers to take action, 
instead of waiting for some expert. The 
short articles explain how to crochet a kip-
pah, build a sukkah, make your own wine, 
wind your tefillin, set up your kosher kitch-
en, tie your own tzitzit and do pretty much 
anything else. 
If you felt not up-to-the task — as many 
Jews did — the book gave you permission 
to try. The Catalog — including its succes-
sor editions — sold about a half-million 
copies. Clearly, a lot of Jews felt inadequate-
ly prepared but eager to do Jewish acts. 
One of the editors of the Jewish Catalog, 
Michael Strassfeld, went on to a long 
career as Jewish educator and rabbi. Now 
Strassfeld has written Judaism Disrupted: A 
Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century (Ben 
Yehuda Press, 2023), aimed at another audi-
ence, or rather, two different audiences. 

Strassfeld explains: “One is people 
involved in the Jewish community, hap-
pily active in the Jewish community, who 
somehow feel that their Jewish life is lack-
ing. They may belong to a synagogue, and 
even attend sometimes, but they just don’t 
feel very satisfied with the services.
“
And the other,” he adds, “people at the 
margins or beyond the margins. People 
who say, ‘I am a mediocre Jew’ or a ‘bad 
Jew.’ People who find Jewish practice unfa-
miliar and who just are not that interested.” 
 Those people feel like they do not, or 
would not, get what they want from Jewish 
practice. The flaw, for Strassfeld, lies in 
trying to “understand Judaism as a system 
of law and obligation.” Rather, he says, “the 
contemporary moment calls for something 
radically different.”
Strassfeld believes that we can choose to 
engage in Judaism to create a meaningful 
life, committed to inner spiritual work 
and social justice, as part of a sustaining 
community. The key involves understand-
ing observances as spiritual practices. 

“Judaism is actually about how to live a life 
of freedom,” he says, quoting the 19th-cen-
tury Chasidic work, Sefat Emet. We, like 
the early Chasidim, can invest meaning in 
our practices by cultivating our intention 
(Hebrew kavannah). We might need the 
discipline of practice, but our real growth 
comes from mental work. 
 “It is kavannah, the intention of the 
heart and mind, which gives these precepts 
meaning,” he writes. 
For example, Strassfeld sees how much 
matzah to eat as not an important ques-
tion. Eating matzah with awareness can 
lead us to valuing our own freedom and to 
working to help others who lack freedom. 
Not eating matzah “would not be a betray-
al of God or the Jewish people. It would be 
a loss to our spiritual life not to remember 
the story of the Jewish people,” he says.

JEWISH PRACTICE
In total, Strassfeld presents 11 core princi-
ples that Jewish practice can embody:
Equality: Seeing others as equals 
because we are all created in the image of 
God, who, paradoxically, has no image. 
Morality: Striving to make the world 
better accords to the universe. 
Awareness: Developing our awareness 
leads us to freedom; unawareness, to slavery.
Freedom from: Working for freedom for 
others, aiming for social justice.

Judaism Disrupted 

Book focuses on inner work required to 
become ‘better Jews.’

LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

ARTS&LIFE
BOOK REVIEW

Rabbi Michael 
Strassfeld