(HC: How do you account for this burgeoning of religious fanaticism among us Jews?) SH: Funny you should ask. I addressed myself to this dilemma in a… - Shulamith Hareven

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(HC: How do you account for this burgeoning of religious fanaticism among us Jews?) SH: Funny you should ask. I addressed myself to this dilemma in an article in a recent issue of The Jerusalem Quarterly. In brief, there are four interrelated ways in which our whole culture has gone off the rails before our very eyes: (one) in the subordination of the rule of law to the way of faith; (two) in the misguided perception of our times as "The End of Days," thereby validating excess as acceptable Jewish behavior; (three) in conferring excessive authority on rabbinic figures; and (four) in the abolition of a sense of sin-which is contrary to the spirit of the Bible. I consider all of these to be deviations from Judaism.