I gather you would put those groups discussed in the article (such as Altshul) in the latter category.

A few thoughts:
Describing the primary motivation for joining these groups as “to lessen alienation,” is unfair.

People join these communities to cultivate and facilitate their sense of responsibility to others as much as they do for their own social fulfillment.

More importantly for our conversation, for many community members, participation in these opt-in networks is a way of actualizing a connection to Klal Yisrael — the Jewish People — generally.

Most importantly, you seem to believe that there is the possibility of a “Jewish People” in which every individual therein relates to the whole with the same attitude and commitment.

You seem to believe that either you put religion first or you put Peoplehood first, and that both of these terms have immutable meaning.

So let me ask you: If I object to haredim getting military exemptions to study in yeshiva, am I looking out for the Jewish People or rejecting the Jewish People? Aren’t I looking out for some Jewish people and not looking out for other Jewish people?

If I support a two-state solution along the 1967 borders, am I looking out for the Jewish People or rejecting the Jewish People?

Do you really believe that there can be a single sense of what responsibility to Klal Yisrael means?

And so, questions about saying or not saying, revising or not revising the Prayer for the State of Israel MAY — as you suggest — reflect a battle between those who care about Jewish Peoplehood and those who only care about Jewish religion.

But it may just as well reflect a disagreement about what is best for the Jewish People — or whatever our own individual understandings of what that dynamic term can mean.

I think we’re mixing up a few issues here, so let me take them on shortly one-by-one:

1. There is a very big difference between small, opt-in communities that are created by the voluntary association of individuals to lessen their alienation, and large, meta-communities known as “Peoples.” Religion, to be clear, comes from the Greek term meaning “to bind.” But in action, religious communities often take the structure of small associations who more than anything else socialize together, and consecrate that experience through a common experience of the sacred.

Religious communities, while in many ways larger than their localities, do not bear the same features as political communities that are Peoples. Buddhists or Maronites might see one-each other as coreligionists, but their obligation stems from a common belief in a religious truth (a hub-and-spokes model) and not in the sovereign whole (a corporate model that makes up a People).

Zionism holds that the Jews are primarily a covenanted community amongst themselves — that is, a corporate body — and only later do they covenant with God. Reform Judaism holds (or classically held, because I’m not sure Reform Judaism clearly holds anything at this moment) that Jews primarily communicate with God — and then connect with each other as citizens of their relevant States.

When it comes to Altschul, I’m sure it’s a wonderful place — but I can’t comment about it in specific because, although I love Park Slope and have become a frequent visitor lately, I’ve never been to their services. I guess I’m a bad religious Jew in that regards.

2. As for the conversion principal, I mean active proselytizing — sorry for not being clear on that. Which means, Reform Judaism hasn’t taken the zeal of the Jewish followers of Jesus, or the Jewishly-inspired followers of Muhammad, to get others to convene around God in their own particular way.

I look forward to your lucid response,

Ariel