I don't like Naomi Wolf that much to begin with, but I hope to G-d that this article represents only the 100 or so self-important young New York Jews who represent this trend (and that's assuming she's getting their views on Jewishness right). I would bet her $18 (chai) that not a dozen Jews outside Manhattan (and even fewer non-Jews)know anything about these goings on. The only reason I know about this stuff is because I'm an internet junkie who loves Jewish stuff and is originally from NY.

"Next-generation" Jewish consciousness? It looks something like this: we can commemorate the Holocaust without having to believe that no other ethnicity has suffered comparably. We should not have to buy into the notion that Palestinians today somehow have to pay for the sins of the Germans 50 years ago. We resist, as Douglas Rushkoff's book Nothing Sacred: the Truth about Judaism suggests, a definition of Jewishness - of "chosenness" - rather than a commitment to ethical behaviour. When you shed the identity of victim, you have to face your people's capacity for being oppressors as well.

I have started a new family tradition. I added a Hanukkah candle and a prayer for the Palestinians last year, longing for their own holy places today. If Jews did that all over the world and Arabs reciprocated, that really would be a miracle.

Exactly - it would be a miracle because for every "Peace Now" or "Rabbis for Human Rights" organization, there are exactly zero Arab organizations publicly defending Israel's right to exist. And how does she think that mainstream Jewish thought allows people to believe that the Palestinians need to pay for the sins of the Germans? The Palestinians need to pay for the crimes of the Palestinians. They were Nazi allies as I recall.

What's also interesting is how little she talks about the one thing that makes Judaism unique - it's religious traditions. The only place she comes close to talking about religion is in her derisive mention of the concept of "chosenness". This concept is debatable for those who do not take the bible literally, but it is not debatable that Jews brought monotheistic religious practice to the world. It is exactly this religious practice that gave us the moral standards to which we in the West are accustomed to, or at least striving for. Ms. Wolf seems to think that morality comes naturally to Jews as if it were inbred.

It's late and I'm tired. This criticism may not be as coherent as I'd like it to be, but it does make me wonder how someone with the same ethnic background as myself can think so differently about the big picture issues of our generation.