THE PLURALITY OF PLURALISM: YOUTH MOVEMENTS AND THE COMMUNAL DISCOURSE OF JEWISH DIVERSITY

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which British Jewish youth movements support, denounce and struggle with the concept of Jewish pluralism and how these actions mimic or diverge from wider communal debates. I argue that these young leaders often consider their approaches to intra-Jewish diversity to be more nuanced than the two dominant (and polarised) communal positions on pluralism. I conclude that youth movements provide an important space for engaging with notions of pluralism in more controversial and significant ways than can be seen in wider British Jewish debates on the issue, but these movements devise educational agendas that are still constrained by a fear of transgressing against the increasingly controversial concept of a singular ‘authentic’ Judaism.