Gilad Shalit and the Five-Year Drought

Friends,

Here is a new little work of mine on the ol' (err...new) Huffington Post. Check it out.

It's true, there is no universal American equivalent to the Israeli rite of passage of compulsory army service. It is also true that the gulf between American and Israeli Jews seems only destined to grow the more isolated Israel becomes. But while the new guard may be tired of dealing with the controversial baggage of Israel and its elusive peace, refusing the causes of ordinary people (coreligionists or not) is what will stain our generation's legacy. Those who abandon their obligation to make the world better because knowledge they have acquired is unsettling to them make a caricature of our era's sense of privilege. It's time that the dint of Jewish 'chosenness' wear itself off as a birthright and reconfigure itself as an ambition.