The Rembrandt They Told Us to Throw Away
About a decade ago I found myself sitting in a conference hall in Birmingham listening to a discussion that had become familiar throughout much of the Jewish world. The keynote speakers included Naftali Bennett, then Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs, and Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. Both men understood that Jewish communities across the Western world faced a challenge. The difficulty was that while everybody seemed capable of describing the problem, nobody appeared entirely certain of the solution.
The problem, as it was then understood, was not anti-Semitism. At least not primarily. Nor was it security, discrimination or exclusion. If anything, the concern was precisely the opposite. For the first time in Jewish history, millions of Jews could live successful, prosperous and accepted lives without ever seriously engaging with their Jewish identity. Previous generations had worried that their children would be shut out. This generation worried that they would be welcomed in. Welcomed everywhere. Accepted so completely that they would eventually struggle to understand why they should remain attached to an inheritance that had become entirely optional.
It was Rabbi Sacks who offered the image that has remained with me ever since. He spoke of a family clearing out their late grandmother’s attic. Amid the accumulated possessions of a lifetime they discover a dusty old painting. Not recognising it, not understanding its significance and having no reason to believe it is anything other than another piece of unwanted clutter, they throw it into a skip. Only later does somebody inform them that the discarded canvas was a Rembrandt. The tragedy, he explained, was not that they had carefully examined the painting and concluded that it lacked value. The tragedy was that they never understood what they were looking at. They discarded something priceless without ever appreciating its worth. It was, he suggested, a useful metaphor for much of Jewish life in the modern West. The danger was not that young Jews were engaging seriously with Judaism and rejecting it. The danger was that many were walking away without ever having discovered what they possessed in the first place.
Looking back now, what strikes me is not simply the accuracy of Rabbi Sacks’s observation. It is the extraordinary amount of energy that the Jewish world invested in trying to solve the problem he identified. Entire organisations were created to address it. Philanthropists funded it. Professionals built careers around it. Conferences discussed it. Consultants consulted about it. Strategic plans were developed, reviewed, revised and redeveloped. If enough Jewish communal leaders could be gathered in enough conference centres for long enough, there always remained the hope that somebody might finally discover the formula. How exactly do you persuade somebody to climb into the attic and take a second look at the painting before it disappears into the skip?
Then October 7 happened and, like so many carefully constructed theories before it, reality arrived to complicate matters.
One of the more remarkable features of the period since October 7 is that many of the people who spent years warning that Jewish identity was becoming less relevant suddenly found themselves sharing public spaces with people who appeared to believe precisely the opposite. Students who had barely thought about Israel discovered that others thought about it constantly. Young professionals whose Jewish engagement extended little beyond attending a family Seder once a year found themselves accused of complicity in crimes committed thousands of miles away. People who had spent years regarding their Jewishness as little more than an occasional biographical detail discovered that complete strangers regarded it as the most important fact about them.
This was not, one imagines, how the story was supposed to go.
The students tearing down posters of kidnapped Israelis did not imagine they were strengthening Jewish identity. The activists shouting “baby killer” outside university gates were not consciously trying to increase attendance at Shabbat dinners. The people demanding that Jews publicly denounce Israel before being permitted entry into respectable society did not set out to inspire a generation to learn more about Judaism. Yet history has always possessed a rather wicked sense of humour and has frequently demonstrated a preference for achieving outcomes that nobody intended.
For decades the Jewish world had wrestled with a single question. How do you persuade a young Jew that being Jewish matters? It turns out there is a surprisingly effective method. Convince him that everybody else thinks it matters. Convince her that strangers who know nothing about her background, beliefs or practices nevertheless regard her Jewishness as the defining feature of her identity. Convince an entire generation that however little attention they may have paid to their inheritance, there are plenty of people willing to pay attention on their behalf.
One of the curiosities of the post-October 7 world is the speed with which certain assumptions collapsed. For years we had been told that identity was increasingly fluid, optional and self-defined. Religion mattered less. Ancestry mattered less. Nationhood mattered less. We were all becoming citizens of a borderless global village. Then thousands of young Jews arrived on university campuses to discover that complete strangers had somehow missed the memo. Nobody seemed particularly interested in whether these students kept kosher, attended synagogue or agreed with the policies of the Israeli government. Nobody asked whether they had ever visited Israel. Nobody inquired whether they could even locate Gaza on a map. The fact that they were Jewish appeared entirely sufficient.
And so a generation that had grown up assuming that Jewish identity was optional suddenly discovered that others regarded it as compulsory.
The irony deepened whenever some obscure Israeli politician said something foolish. Which, given the nature of politics, was not an entirely rare occurrence. Every few weeks there would be another comment, another headline, another statement from somebody who should probably have remained silent. What followed was often fascinating. One could almost hear the collective sigh of relief from certain quarters. Aha. There it is. You see. We were right all along. The interesting thing was never the comment itself. Every country possesses politicians capable of saying foolish things. Many appear to regard it as their principal contribution to public life. The interesting thing was the eagerness with which such comments were embraced as confirmation of a much larger story. It was as though certain people desperately needed the Rembrandt to be a forgery.
And yet the effect on many young Jews was not what anybody expected. Instead of throwing the painting away they began looking at it. Instead of apologising for the inheritance they became curious about it. Instead of distancing themselves from Judaism they started asking questions about it. What exactly is this thing that people seem to care about so passionately? Why has it survived for so long? Why does it provoke such strong reactions? What did my grandparents see in it? What exactly is hanging in the attic?
Across the Olami world and far beyond it we have witnessed something that few predicted. Young Jews are not merely defending Israel. They are exploring Judaism. They are attending Shabbat dinners, joining learning programmes, travelling to Israel, building friendships, asking questions and seeking community. Not because somebody finally discovered the perfect marketing slogan. Not because a consultant produced a sufficiently compelling PowerPoint presentation. But because challenge has a habit of forcing people to examine things they previously took for granted. The people shouting at them believed they were exposing something shameful. Instead many discovered something beautiful. The people who hoped to make Jewish identity uncomfortable frequently succeeded only in making it unavoidable.
Perhaps the greatest lesson this generation has taught us is that for too long we were asking the wrong question. The Jewish conversation revolved around survival. How do we survive? How do we preserve continuity? How do we stop decline? They were understandable questions, but they were also the questions of a community playing defence. This generation has moved somewhere else entirely. They are not interested merely in surviving. They want to thrive. They want a Judaism that is confident rather than anxious, ambitious rather than defensive and compelling rather than merely preserved. They do not want to inherit a museum piece. They want to build a future.
Today more than 71,000 young Jews engage across the Olami network in 28 countries around the world. That figure is extraordinary enough. What is even more extraordinary is what lies behind it. Because from London to São Paulo, from Johannesburg to Melbourne, from New York to Paris, the story is remarkably consistent. Communities are not struggling to generate interest. They are struggling to accommodate it. The challenge is no longer persuading young Jews that Judaism matters. Increasingly they have reached that conclusion themselves. The challenge is whether we can build communities, opportunities and institutions capable of matching their appetite for belonging, purpose and connection.
For years we worried that young Jews would throw the Rembrandt away. It turns out the greater challenge may be finding enough wall space for all the people who have suddenly decided they want to hang it.
