By Bambi Sheleg | 10/12/2009
Perhaps it was the war in Iraq that made it unequivocally and absolutely clear that the events of September 11 had changed the face of the earth, and that nothing would again return to what it had been. Not only was the world economy fighting for its life, and the sense of personal security undermined in many parts of the globe, but an understanding was percolating through: namely that the ethical world, on which so many of those who subscribed Western culture over the previous generation had placed their faith, had again ceased to function. We are at the threshold of a new age, while the ideas that nourished an entire generation of influential intellectuals are losing their validity and are no longer available as a code for deciphering reality.
Post-modernism, that subversive web of ideas that has achieved strong footing in broad realms of our lives, has forced us to look suspiciously upon the various sources of authority, economic corporations and military organizations, government and the academic establishment, as well as a complete system of historical, scientific and cultural explanations.
Post-modernism has caused us to divest ourselves of naiveté. It has ushered in on its wing tidings of the partial, the relative, the local; it has greatly advanced the status of women, and the status of all other minority groups in western societies. But in its attempt to give equal weight to all human "narratives," it has been blind to the danger posed by groups that do not accept its definitions, which could enter and exploit a vacuum devoid of ideals that it created.
On the morning after September 11, the entire Western world, including Israel, awoke to the need for a non-partial, non-relative body of ideas that would offer a clear statement regarding the nature of that which is desirable and that which is not. The present edition of Eretz Acheret emerged from a sense that the "day after" postmodernism is already here. We will venture to take the position that the next stage in human thought will involve a renewed and original connection of every nation with its independent foundations of culture. In the case of Israel, this stage will be a step in the interpretation of Judaism.
