The philosopher Richard Rorty famously argued that a culture’s moral aspirations can be discerned from the metaphors it favors. A culture that praises being “a faithful cog in the great wheel” is not going to smile on disruptive innovation, and a nation that talks about “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” might prefer entrepreneurial grit to social welfare.
What does it say about Jewish culture that we so ubiquitously use the metaphor of the “Jewish journey” to describe the experience of being Jewish in America today? Perhaps it is time to consider a new metaphor: “Jewish homecoming.”