NYT on J Street

Very interesting NYT Magazine article by James Traub about the rise of J Street. I liked this paragraph because I lie at the literal intersection of these demographic trends:

The average age of the dozen or so staff members is about 30. Ben-Ami speaks for, and to, this post-Holocaust generation. “They’re all intermarried,” he says. “They’re all doing Buddhist seders.” They are, he adds, baffled by the notion of “Israel as the place you can always count on when they come to get you.” Living in a world of blogs, they’re similarly skeptical of the premise that “we’re still on too-shaky ground” to permit public disagreement. There’s a curious and striking analogy with the situation of Cuban-Americans, whose politics until quite recently were dominated by the generation that fled Castro’s revolution and were grimly determined to see his regime overthrown. Obama has not had to pay a price for moderating the American embargo, as his predecessors would have, because Cuban-American opinion is no longer in thrall to the older generation — precisely J Street’s goal in regard to the Middle East.

And then there’s me: 75 percent Jewish, 25 percent Cuban, 100 percent blogger. That said, my family’s seders are pretty banal and not at all buddhist. We have gefilte fish and matzoh ball soup and brisket and all the normal stuff. I’m not really clear on what a buddhist seder will be.