In a recent book, Following 9/11: Religion Coverage in the New York
Times, Christopher Vecsey examines journalistic definitions of
religion, before and (especially) after the terrible events of
September 11, 2001. Here he explores Times portrayals of the
cumulative religious tradition called Judaism, embodied by peoples
who have called themselves Jews from antiquity to modernity,
throughout the world, and especially in the United States, where a
plurality of Jews live today and where the Times is published. To
understand Judaism today is to fathom its diverse texts, beliefs,
rituals, ethics, and institutions, the contemporary concerns of
Jews, and the relationships not only among Jews, but also between
Jews and gentiles, and the continuing impact of anti-Semitism upon
Jewish life. Since the 1940s, Jews and Judaism have been profoundly
affected by the horrific course of the Holocaust, and by the
formation of Israel as a Jewish nation-state. These have been the
major themes in the Times' treatment of Judaism chronicled in
thousands of articles. Like an insider to Jewish tradition, the
paper recounts favorite holy day recipes and tales of survival and
travail in a multi-national and assimilative world. In so doing,
however, the paper probes not only concurrence within Judaism, but
more tellingly, a complex, multi-cultural, at-odds-with-itself
Jewishness. Rather than thinking of the Times as a mouthpiece for
Jewish interests, it is far more accurate to say that the Times has
analyzed, like an outsider, the paradoxes, the tensions, and the
culture wars in contemporary Jewish existence, in order to define
pluralistic Judaism as a political, cultural, religious entity. The
Times treats Judaism humanistically, showing that it is the Jewish
people who are most important to Judaism, not merely the texts, the
theology, or the institutions. The paper works from perspectival
Talmudic principles, reporting multiple viewpoints in the circle of
Jewish faith, observance, contestation, and disbelief, constantly
questioning all sources, as an observant instrument of inquiry into
Jewish existence, to expose Judaism's points of conflict as well as
its areas of consensus.
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