Jews and Power
By Ruth Wisse
Led by Rabbi Andy Bachman

In this provocative book, Ruth Wisse, a professor at Harvard, provides a radical new way to think about the Jewish relationship to power. Traditional Jews believed that upholding the covenant with God constituted a treaty with the most powerful force in the universe. This was later transformed into a belief that, unburdened by a military, Jews could pursue their religious mission on a purely moral plain. Taking a long view of history from the Kingdom of David to the Oslo Accords, Wisse demonstrates how Jewish political weakness both increased Jewish vulnerability to scapegoating and violence, and unwittingly goaded power-seeking nations to cast Jews as targets.