"Hip" (slang):

1. Keenly aware of or knowledgeable about the latest trends.
2. Very fashionable or stylish.

Recently, within the span of a couple of days, I read two related articles – one about "hip" Jews (as Commentary Magazine called them) and another about "the new" Jews (a label used by CNN). Each dealt with Jews who are "reinventing" Judaism. Not surprisingly, they came at it from very different perspectives.

The Commentary article subheading tells how its author, D.G. Myers, feels about this current trend: "What happens when you mix the radical pursuit of personal identity with one of the world’s most venerable faiths? The faith loses."

The other one, appearing on CNN’s website, caught my eye when I went there to check on the stock market. How could I ignore the photo of a very large star of David tattooed on the back of a man’s neck? I clicked on the link. The text spoke admiringly of how young Jews are finding ways to make Judaism work for them. (Speaking of tattoos, the article did address – with a quote from Rabbi Joel Roth – the question of whether a tattoo would prevent a Jew from being buried in a Jewish cemetery.)

Throughout our history, we Jews have often faced the temptations of secular culture. This is certainly not the first instance of secularism seeming to gain the upper hand over the traditional Jewish culture. I am writing this just before Chanukah, the celebration of the victory of traditional Jews over the Assyrian Greeks whose reign in ancient Israel resulted in the Hellenization of a large number of Jews.

The two articles agreed that many Jews – particularly the younger generation – do not consider being Jewish as necessarily something positive or negative. They are comfortable identifying as Jews, but feel that it is merely a starting point from which they should be free to pick and choose among everything available to them. That includes traditional Judaism, practices that feel Jewish to them, or something they find meaningful but that is entirely unrelated or even foreign to Jewish religion or culture. And today, with the entire world available with a few keystrokes on the computer, a person has limitless choices.

This leads to some questions. Is it good to have this freedom? Are the results positive or negative? Should we care? How should we react?

Not surprisingly, for the CNN writer Jessica Ravitz, being a Jew is all about finding individual meaning. She sees this freedom as a means by which Jews can find relevance and thereby gain personal fulfillment. She thinks it would be wrong to constrain or put limits on personal choices.

Myers, on the other hand, believes Judaism is defined by a specific set of religious and cultural choices. For him, Jewishness cannot exist without agreement upon some basic concepts that tell us who we are and provide boundaries.

So what is better for the Jewish community? Should we try to seize the opportunity to be open to hipsters and seek to draw them and their new thinking and ideas into our mainstream? Or, do we eschew secular temptation and keep focused on our traditions? This is a debate being held in many places. As a member of the Conservative movement, Congregation B’nai Moshe subscribes to the tenet that we are not free to pick and choose. Rather, we are committed to tradition and it should shape our lives and lifestyles. According to our central beliefs, each member should:

1. Support a Conservative synagogue.
2. Study as a Conservative Jew.
3. Use Jewish values to guide behavior.
4. Increase personal Jewish living.
5. Use values of tikun olam in the world's continual repair.
6. Consider the effect of decisions on Klal Yisrael.
7. Increase ties to Israel.
8. Increase knowledge of Hebrew.

The implications of the debate are important. What is your opinion?