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My guest is Tal Keinan. His new book God Is in the Crowd is an original and provocative blueprint for Judaism in the twenty-first century. Presented through the lens of Tal Keinan\u2019s unusual personal story, it a sobering analysis of the threat to Jewish continuity. As the Jewish people has become concentrated in just two hubs\u2014America and Israel\u2014it has lost the subtle code of governance that endowed Judaism with dynamism and relevance in the age of Diaspora. This code, as Keinan explains, is derived from Francis Galton\u2019s \u201cwisdom of crowds,\u201d in which a group\u2019s collective intelligence, memory, and even spirituality can be dramatically different from, and often stronger than, that of any individual member\u2019s. He argues that without this code, this ancient people\u2014and the civilization that it spawned\u2014will soon be extinct. Finally, Keinan puts forward a bold and original plan to rewrite the Jewish code, proposing a new model for Judaism and for community in general.

Keinan was born to a secular Jewish family in Florida. His interest in Judaism was ignited by a Christian minister at his New England prep school and led him down the unlikely path to enlistment in the Israel Air Force. Using his own dramatic experiences as a backdrop, and applying lessons from his life as a business leader and social activist, Keinan takes the reader on a riveting adventure, weaving between past, present, and future, and fusing narrative with theory to demonstrate Judaism\u2019s value to humanity and chart its path into the future.

Special Guest: Tal Keinan.