“...Jewish young people made up a conspicuously high number of these newly born-again hippies and rebels and radicals in the late 1960s and early 1970s...”
The two most famous were Abbie Hoffman out of Brandeis University and Jerry Rubin out of Berkeley. Both fellas were interesting stories.
On the other side, We had conservative Jews like my old boss Mario Rosenthal in El Salvador who was a very outspoken and brave anti-communist. I once kidded him that his views were far different than Abe Rosenthal of the New York Times and he replied, “ahh “Rosenthal” is like “Smith” for Jews!
I wonder what the atmosphere is like today at historically Jewish and very liberal Brandeis.
The strongest “faith” group today are radical muslims, who really do practice what they preach.
Black churches that I have watched are in serious need of revival and turning back to the L_rd.
I used to say the same about the basic protestant denominations, but I am not sure that they even want to be saved anymore.
Evangelical denominations are slightly better but they are all too often focused on “me!”.
The Catholic Church in the West has little power. I would love it if an African or an Asian became the next Pope but they would need to overcome the entire Western bureaucracy.
In short, it is time to continue to pray for a revival of souls on this earth.
It truly is not Us verses Them, but of Sin and Death verses all of us.
If the Jews who strayed were actually faithful to Judaism, there would be a Third Temple by now.
I don’t know but Bob Dylan’s Christianity is coming to the forefront again with a reissue of the 3 albums, unreleased songs, and video/film from the tours.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/arts/music/bob-dylan-bootleg-series-trouble-no-more.html
Bob Dylan’s Songs for the Soul, Revisited and Redeemed
By JON PARELESNOV. 1, 2017
Even in 1979, Bob Dylan could cause a commotion. That was the year he released “Slow Train Coming,” the album that announced his embrace of Christianity, soon to be followed by “Saved” in 1980 and “Shot of Love” in 1981: his born-again trilogy. For those three years, the iconoclast, freethinker and reluctant voice of a generation proclaimed faith in salvation by Jesus Christ (despite his Jewish upbringing), with lyrics that drew a line in the sand. In “Precious Angel” on “Slow Train Coming,” he declared, “Ya either got faith or ya got unbelief, and there ain’t no neutral ground.”
That phase of Mr. Dylan’s music gets a revelatory second look with the boxed set “Trouble No More — The Bootleg Series Vol. 13 / 1979-1981,” to be released Friday. Eight CDs and a DVD collect performances, rehearsals and studio outtakes. The DVD intersperses live footage from 1980 — Mr. Dylan, often camera-shy, clearly wanted this era documented — with fiery sermons written by Luc Sante and delivered by the actor Michael Shannon...
Some fans who had stayed with Mr. Dylan through his multiple transitions since the early 1960s — from folk singer to electric rocker to country crooner to Americana sage — rejected his new, sectarian message. The critic Greil Marcus’s first reaction to “Shot of Love” was that it was arrogant, intolerant and smug.
Doubling down on his message, Mr. Dylan also decided to sing only his new evangelical songs on tour, interspersed with some preaching, though he relented in 1981 and began performing older songs, too. Throughout the born-again years, his audiences would be divided in a way they hadn’t been since Mr. Dylan went electric in the mid-1960s. There were protests outside shows and a mix of enthusiasts and hecklers in the theaters...
Thank G-d that today the Chabad movement is flourishing on college campuses and worldwide. Jewish lost souls seeking a spiritual connection now have substantial opportunities to find it in Judaism without resorting to following acolytes of other faith groups.