Is Judaism Still Relevant? (or: Rapidly Catching Up with the Past)

Recently, a local colleague of mine published an article in a national newspaper in which he called for "Judaism to be relevant." When I met him in a semi-public setting, I asked him what he meant by that. He said: "we have to meet people where they are."
I pressed him for his own osition on Judaism and he said:
"we can't be all things to people."

We subsequently had lunch and I discovered that, despite the above,  he is a thoughtful, learned rabbi.

Why does an intelligent Rabbi need to speak in cliches in public and how can such a public stance ever be relevant.

But I think my colleague is on to something: take the organized Jewish community's response this week to the shameful Israeli parliament law criminalizing of free speech on West Bank settlements (anti-boycott law). For over a year, as the Knesset bill wound its way through committee and preliminary votes, the progressive Israel/Palestine blogosphere has warned of this impending train wreck. In my own clergy world I tried repeatedly to have a statement issued warning against this law. Nobody was willing to be the first to condemn Israel. This week, the passing of the anti-boycott law, did the trick and produced a sudden torrent of high-minded resolutions. Following on the heels of the U.S. State Department, the ADL (!), and a range of Israeli organizations, American Jewish religious organizations have suddenly discovered their voice. Handel in Judas Maccabeus might have called this outpouring of righteous condemnation: "pious orgies".

How relevant can Judaism be when it only comments on the past?

Oh, and had the issue not been about muzzling human rights activists and criminalizing free speech but something really important, say, making sure that Reform Jews get the same discriminatory privileges as Orthodox Jews, you can bet that the organized Jewish community in the U.S. would have been fully engaged in blocking that law.

Hamas Command Flies to Israel ?

The 'flotilla' gave birth to a 'flytilla.' The successful blocking of most of the Gaza flotilla through the sabotage of two of the boats in Athens and Israeli/American pressure on the Greek government to prevent the U.S (and other) boats from leaving the harbor put most of the Gaza flotilla out of commission.

The Israeli authorities are in a tizzy over the "flytilla", the campaign of pro-Palestinian activists to fly to Israel en route to the West Bank. 500 policemen filled Israel's International airport and Israelis verbally attacked suspected activists. Even a reporter for the right-wing Jerusalem Post was shocked by the mob behavior at Israel's showcase portal to the world.

Oh, and the title of this blogpost comes from an oddity of the Hebrew language:
The Israeli term for the flytilla is (literally) "the protest airlift" "matas hamecha'ah". מטס המחאה . I mis-read the headline in the Israeli paper Haaretz because these two words are a perfect anagram for "mateh hahamas" מטה החמאס, which means "The Hamas Command."

To look at the frenzied response, it might as well have been, except that Israel does not the people of Gaza to leave, least of all the Hamas command.