"Never before in Jewish history had we such large groups of people who are so in but also so out."

From Avakesh;

Our children now grow up in a pradigm in which the supreme value is making rational, efficient and value free choices. There are many possible choices and one makes them based on what one wants and desires and not based on overarching conisderations. One can have a mitzva or a a cell phoen adn this choice is on teh same order of reality as teh choice between two items in a restaurant. It is not that one choice is moral and the other immoral. Post-modern child or adult does not think in those terms. Is it then a surprise to us that religious considerations fall by wayside? It is not that our children and young adults choose one way of life over another, they think and function in a different sphere, only a sphere of rational and efficient choices. Religion is not a part of such choices and they see and experience no conflict in making choices without reference to religion. They are not in the "parsha".

How then do we get past this? Panelists in various discussions argued that children must be taught Yiras Shomayim as an antidote to materialism. I don't agree because I do not believe that these children and adults can even rgrasp these concepts or relate to them. Instead, in a prior essay I argued that he language of post-modernism is not logical and conceptual but image and sound-bite based. Religion will only succeed is it can touch our kids on a level below the rational. We lost their minds to the accursed culture but their hearts are still open, perhaps more open than every before. More years in Kollel will not do it. We must use music, story, and film as the way to penetrate below the level of the mind and world-view upon which Religion lies as a dead letter sacrificed to efficiency. Groups that do this, which appeal to emotion and not the mind, Breslav and Chabad are actually succeeding. Activist religion is where need to go to save our children. More zemiros and farbrengens, more vodka, more peer-group activities and more public action is where we need to go.

Went a very different direction very much from what I would have - seemingly away from Maalei, observant Jews in the arts, Mimamaakim, et al, towards particular established darchei in Torah - appeals to pre-modernism, from long before even the uncomprehending "modern" parents generation - as if modernism and it's aftermath never happened!