Study Session #2 was with Stuart Schoffman, a regular writer
in the Jerusalem Post, on Jewish Thought. He suggested that "Judaism is
an argument about what Judaism is." One way to argue is the dialectical
approach; when two texts conflict, a third appears to resolve the issue.
He sketched the life of Theodore Herzl, at once a visionary, madman, reporter,
playwrite, and secular Jew who once approached the Pope with the suggestion
that in return for Papal support of a State of Israel, Jews would submit
to a mass conversion to Christianity. He converted his son to Catholicism,
and was furious when the Chief Rabbi of Vienna forbade Christmas trees
in Jewish homes. Then, shocked by the rising tide of Anti-Semitism that
took fire around the Dreyfus affair, he swung again to a Zionism that gave
birth to the State of Israel.