When the results from the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey were released, one figure made headlines: 52%.
That number purportedly represented the intermarriage rate among Jews who were married between 1985 and 1990. It was by no means the first indication that intermarriage was increasingly common, but it signaled the first time that a majority of American Jews were not marrying other Jews. The years that followed saw a significant shift in communal resources to address what was dubbed the “continuity crisis.”
In November of this past year, Jews were surveyed once again, this time as they left their polling places on Election Day. Now we have a new figure: 78%. That is the proportion of American Jews who voted for Barack Obama, defying many predictions.
Just as the 1990 NJPS helped to galvanize Jewish concern about intermarriage, the level of enthusiasm among Jews for President Obama will similarly galvanize concern around issues of social change and justice.
Elections, like surveys, can be clarifying. But they rarely tell us something that close observers didn’t already know. Just as intermarriage was a concern (and a reality) before the 1990 NJPS, American Jews have long been at the forefront of social justice movements.
Yet in recent decades the widespread embrace of social causes by American Jews had been lost on many of our institutions. The question now is how will our Jewish institutions relate to the Jews of Generation Obama? The choice is clear: Build a community that reflects the passions and priorities of the majority of Jews, or watch the gap between Jewish institutions and individual Jews grow ever wider.
Some recent developments suggest that our community is making the right choice. For example:
• Several leading Jewish foundations, including the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation and the Jim Joseph Foundation, recently provided more than $18 million in seed funding for a new Jewish organization, Repair the World. This nonprofit aims to “make service a defining element of American Jewish life, learning, and leadership.”
• San Francisco’s Jewish Community Federation hired as its CEO Daniel Sokatch, the founding director of the California-based Progressive Jewish Alliance. This marked the first time that the leader of a local Jewish social-change group had been tapped to run a Jewish federation.
• BBYO, the country’s leading interdenominational Jewish youth movement, is making service the cornerstone of its programming. In the fall BBYO will complete a merger with Panim, an organization that promotes Jewish leadership and values through a range of programs.
• The Conservative movement has taken a leading role in the highest-profile struggle over issues of social justice within the Jewish community. The scandal over working conditions at the Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse mobilized a broad coalition of Jewish groups. And it helped spur the Conservative movement to create a new ethical certification for kosher foods and to adopt a stronger position in support of workers’ rights.
The embrace of Jewish social-change organizations and leaders by their more traditional counterparts comes at a time of great opportunity for our community.
Since the attacks of 9/11, young Americans have been hungry for opportunities to serve. Jews have embraced service with particular zeal. Many are looking for direction and resources, and the Jewish community has an opportunity to provide these.
The election of President Obama, meanwhile, has empowered a new coterie of Jewish leaders, both inside and outside his administration. These new influentials tend to share the president’s passion for social change. Indeed, it is no coincidence that this year, the machers behind Newsweek’s annual list of America’s most influential rabbis gave the top spot to Rabbi David Saperstein, the highest-profile social justice leader working in the Jewish community today. (Saperstein was also chosen to give the opening invocation at the 2008 Democratic National Convention before Obama’s acceptance speech.)
Finally, the severe recession already has begun to force a rethinking of communal priorities and the ways in which our institutions are structured. New fundraising models, of the sort that fueled the effort to elect Obama, will encourage institutions to reach out to wider audiences and collaborate more with their constituents in shaping their agendas. Our communal institutions will succeed if they listen to the voices of the masses of Jews who prioritize engagement around issues of justice.
Despite its financial losses this past year, the Jewish community is well positioned to play an important role in the public square, addressing the pressing issues of the day. Jews, like many other Americans, want to be a part of the solutions to challenges that have long felt intractable. We want to reverse climate change and end poverty for working Americans. As the Obama administration and Congress tackle these and other issues, the Jewish community should be helping shape efforts to bring change.
I believe that if the Jewish community had taken all the resources — financial and otherwise — that we put into continuity programming after the 1990 NJPS and instead invested them in addressing even one of the challenges most pressing to those most in need, we would have no problem attracting Jews to our institutions. It is heartening that we now appear ready to give this proposition a try.
Simon Greer is president and CEO of Jewish Funds for Justice.
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In the headline of this article, "continuity crisis" has been placed in quotation marks, as if with a little wink of the eye it is hinted that "it's not really so". The whole article has an atmosphere of optimism. The feeling is that the "so called continuity crisis" has been replaced by a very enthusiastic social actions agenda. Well, sorry, but the continuity crisis in American Jewry cannot be solved by enthusiastic support of Obama's presidency and tiqqun 'olam. It is such a disservice to the American Jewish public to present again and again a rosy picture of reality.
Jewish identity will not disappear. There will always be Jews who will continue identifying themselves as Jews, and will express their Jewishness in one way or another. But this doesn't mean that the crisis is behind us. Not at all. The growing majority of Jews do not participate in any form of Jewish life. Their children do not receive any Jewish educational instruction. In general, even the active Jews are illiterate in Hebrew, and have but a meagre understanding of the Jewish sources.
Now, we can just ignore these masses, focusing just on those who do perform in the realm of Jewish life. In such a way, the picture before our eyes will always be positive. The original concept of tiqqun 'olam in the Mishna was meant to solve issues of the Jewish community. As one expresses pride in the modern day tiqqun 'olam (social activism for mankind at large), let's not lose focus on the inner Jewish world and its crisis.
There is a crisis of continuity. The cultural difference between Jews and others of middle-class America is very blurry. The difference between American Jews and other Jews in the world is very clear. American Jews have lost their distinctiveness, their unique Jewish expressiveness, through assimilation. This is the source of intermarriage, as it is the source of apathy toward Jewish communal life. Please, no more rosy articles! Take pride in social action, but at the same time the Forward must tell the truth to its public. There is a crisis, and there doesn't seem to be anyone in charge.
So my donations to Jewish organizations should go to trying to control the weather? No thanks, I have better causes to support.
In my opinion, it is this kind of thinking that has helped to bring American Jewry to the sorry state which these statistics reflect. If Jewish identity is equated with the naive idealism of trying to "fix the world", while ignoring Jews' first obligation - to preserve, protect and defend themselves - the ultimate result will be to make the remaining Jews nothing but a liberal social movement. What is worse, Jews now face real, immediate threats and dangers.
Jews need to be rallied around the primary issues, the real challenges, which matter: (1) The existential threat posed by Iran to the Jewish State of Israel, which has always been the Jewish dream and is now the last refuge of Jews throughout the world. (2) The new threat posed by the most anti-Israel American administration in history to fracture and intimidate American Jews from supporting Israel, and to legitimate the most extremist anti-Israel fringe groups within the Jewish community. (3) The failure of what remains of American Jewish families to actively raise their children as committed Jews who will in turn marry and raise Jewish children (this has been a multi-generational failure of American Jewish families and their "liberal" Jewish leaders).
Assimilation will always take place, and Jewish families have struggled with dealing with family members who marry outside of the community and abandon their identities as Jews. But "rabbis" who legitimize these unions create more problems than they placate.
The author sees the challenge as "attracting Jews to our institutions". But if the institutions have so diluted and abandoned their core purposes, and fail to face the real challenges, what is the point? If those institutions fail to serve Jewish needs, they are part of the problem. Many American Congregations have long been nothing more than "Jewish churches", alternatives to belonging to another church. "Social action" is all well and good, and fighting poverty, environmentalism, saving the whales, are all fine activities. But they are not the raisons d'etre of being a Jew. And we live in a time of existential threats to Jews.
The immediate threats to Jews are the military threats to Israel posed by Iran, and the domestic political threats to Israel and American Jews.
The longer-term threats are rampant assimilation, which is further encouraged and hastened by the "liberal", and now much worse, "progressive" (often anti-Israel) ideologies that exalt "tikkun olam" (for others) while failing to first and foremost engage in its true meaning: "tikkun Yisrael", reinvigorating and protecting Jews.
American Jews need a "Rebuild American Jewry" program or "Save American Jews" movement. On the political front, a stand-with-Israel movement ("Save Israel") can galvanize Jewish adults and youth, if they are alerted to the threat. Young and old can be rallied to protect Israel against attacks by the Obama administration. Just because Jews voted for Obama does not mean that they are not capable of realizing their terrible error as they realize they were lied to. (The 6% assessment of Israelis of Obama being pro-Israel can soon be matched by American Jews.) In times of crisis such as this, Jews are being shocked into facing reality.
Coining the term and thinking in terms of "Jews of Generation Obama" would be a sad self-defeating mistake. There are real "activist opportunities" to preserve the Jewish people: They are the real challenges for American Jews described above. Jews need to realize that "social justice" first needs to mean social justice for Jews.
Frank left out one danger to the Jewish community: the Rapture-ready, Armageddon loving Protestant fundamentalists - who can't wait to see Jews and Arabs killing each other (in their terms, a win-win situation, since each death is of a Christ-denier) over a plot of land- and their "Jewish" accomplices known as Jews for Jesus.
Did you omit the J4Js, Frank, perhaps because they are some of your best friends?
If I am to define my Judaism through paranoia about losing my identify and culture, I'm not interested. If I am to limit my choice of mates to the small percentage of humanity that is culturally, historically, intellectually and/or ritualistically Jewish, that unacceptably and impractically reduces my field of potential romantic partners and decreases the time I spend engaging with the rest of our world. I want to respect my history, culture and people by taking actions to make progressive change for all, and I hope to recognize that it is at least in part a challenge that has been set for me as a Jew. Thank you Mr. Greer for leading an organization that respects Jewish law, teachings, wisdom and identity while encouraging me to improve our broken world. A better world is a better place for Jews. It is not an era for isolation and defense; it is one of radical change and challenge to take part in the world as human beings with a special place in the canon and modern perspectives of otherness.
The myopic, elitist views of Frank are why Jewish youth are turning away from institutional Judaism in droves. If Frank represents American Judaism, I want no part of it, for me or my children. Fortunately, there are some people like Mr. Greer, who recognize that Judaism solely for its own sake is not Judaism at all.
The anger displayed in response to my comments by politically motivated Jews of the left wing, whose only connection to being a Jew is an identification with "social justice movements" is perhaps not surprising. But the premise of this article, that Jews have not adequately devoted their efforts to social causes, is simply false. For years the "liberal" Jewish establishments have built their edifices around that concept, in the hope of attracting assimilated Jews, who were unfortunately raised in families by parents who saw little value in being a Jew, and wanted to escape its social constraints.
Many Jewish educators and religious and cultural leaders struggled bravely against the tendency of many Jewish parents to think of Jews as another American "religion". In fact, there was safety in that concept, the hope that Jews could not always be the "other", and be fully accepted into the greater community. Jewish educators sought to instill Jewish pride and culture. But it is true that it was a tough sell to many young people who were easily influenced by popular culture and whose parents did not try very hard to raise them in a Jewish home, or worse, simply out-sourced their Jewish education to their local Temple.
Parenthetically, I think that much of the Jewish "activism" for social causes backfired. At times it has seemed to prove that no good act goes unpunished (an example being black anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish affirmative action quotas, as thanks for Jewish leadership and support in the Civil Rights movement.) It was fine to reach out to other communities, and stand with them against discrimination in America. But to premise the purpose of a "Jewish" community on primarily social action, particularly in an ever more dangerous world where the beneficiaries of Jewish social action are often anti-Semites, or worse, sworn violent enemies of the Jewish people, perverts "tikkun olam" into something self-destructive. Extreme examples are seen in the anti-Semitism among Jewish "progressives". Just look at J Street. Just look at the anti-Israel stories, columns, and comments on web site.
Those who do not choose "Judaism for its own sake" should join a social action organization. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, and depending on the cause (so long as it is not anti-Israel or otherwise anti-Jewish) it can be positive and laudable. There are many virtuous wonderful non-Jews. There is no need to remain a Jew. You can "respect (your) history" - if that is your interpretation of your history - by engaging in social action, and decide to assimilate. You can marry whomever you want, and probably watch your children, and theirs, fully assimilate. Living Jews are the small remnant of those who were murdered, forcibly converted, willingly converted or otherwise assimilated, as well as those who chose to return and rejoin their people. If being a Jew "for its own sake", because you were born and raised and belong to an extraordinary people, Am Yisrael, has not motivated you to think and feel yourself a Jew, and you can find nothing of value in it for you, then perhaps assimilation is for you. Go in peace.
Jewish youth has not turned away from "institutional Judaism" because of inadequate involvement in social causes. If anything, the opposite is true. Young Jews can be motivated, particularly as now, when Jews are emperiled and under attack, to engage in pro-Jewish, pro-Israel causes and activities. It is a place where they can meet other Jewish singles. They are needed in Campus Jewish outreach programs, where anti-Semitism is not only tolerated, but institutionalized, and stand up against the arab and "progressive" hate and intimidation. They can engage in community assistance programs. They can engage in Jewish groups that study, and teach, and socialize, and travel, and learn. There are so many social action programs that help individual Jews, and the Jewish people, in America, in Israel, and throughout the world. They can help to "change" things for the better.
These are very dangerous times. I also, see an indirect relationship between the high rate of intermarriage and the Obama Jewish vote. It reflects a lack of sensitivity and concern for the safety of the Jewish people, and the naive willingness to vote for a "liberal" feel-good ideology for lack of an appreciation of the dangers posed to Jews by a radical "progressive" agenda.
Unfortunately, I also see a strategic reason to grow the Jewish community, given the Obama threat to Israel, which by definition is a threat to all Jews, and which in short order may become a more direct threat to American Jews. When your people are threatened, is not the time to indulge yourself with secondary issues. It does not mean you are "solely for yourself", but your first - primary obligation is to protect yourself, and to do so, you need to know your enemies. The old line, charity begins at home, comes to mind. And if I am not for myself ...?
The anger displayed in response to my comments by politically motivated Jews of the left wing, whose only connection to being a Jew is an identification with "social justice movements" is perhaps not surprising. But the premise of this article, that Jews have not adequately devoted their efforts to social causes, is simply false. For years the "liberal" Jewish establishments have built their edifices around that concept, in the hope of attracting assimilated Jews, who were unfortunately raised in families by parents who saw little value in being a Jew, and wanted to escape its social constraints.
Many Jewish educators and religious and cultural leaders struggled bravely against the tendency of many Jewish parents to think of Jews as another American "religion". In fact, there was safety in that concept, the hope that Jews could not always be the "other", and be fully accepted into the greater community. Jewish educators sought to instill Jewish pride and culture. But it is true that it was a tough sell to many young people who were easily influenced by popular culture and whose parents did not try very hard to raise them in a Jewish home, or worse, simply out-sourced their Jewish education to their local Temple.
Parenthetically, I think that much of the Jewish "activism" for social causes backfired. At times it has seemed to prove that no good act goes unpunished (an example being black anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish affirmative action quotas, as thanks for Jewish leadership and support in the Civil Rights movement.) It was fine to reach out to other communities, and stand with them against discrimination in America. But to premise the purpose of a "Jewish" community on primarily social action, particularly in an ever more dangerous world where the beneficiaries of Jewish social action are often anti-Semites, or worse, sworn violent enemies of the Jewish people, perverts "tikkun olam" into something self-destructive. Extreme examples are seen in the anti-Semitism among Jewish "progressives". Just look at J Street. Just look at the anti-Israel stories, columns, and comments on web site.
Those who do not choose "Judaism for its own sake" should join a social action organization. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, and depending on the cause (so long as it is not anti-Israel or otherwise anti-Jewish) it can be positive and laudable. There are many virtuous wonderful non-Jews. There is no need to remain a Jew. You can "respect (your) history" - if that is your interpretation of your history - by engaging in social action, and decide to assimilate. You can marry whomever you want, and probably watch your children, and theirs, fully assimilate. Living Jews are the small remnant of those who were murdered, forcibly converted, willingly converted or otherwise assimilated, as well as those who chose to return and rejoin their people. If being a Jew "for its own sake", because you were born and raised and belong to an extraordinary people, Am Yisrael, has not motivated you to think and feel yourself a Jew, and you can find nothing of value in it for you, then perhaps assimilation is for you. Go in peace.
Jewish youth has not turned away from "institutional Judaism" because of inadequate involvement in social causes. If anything, the opposite is true. Young Jews can be motivated, particularly as now, when Jews are emperiled and under attack, to engage in pro-Jewish, pro-Israel causes and activities. It is a place where they can meet other Jewish singles. They are needed in Campus Jewish outreach programs, where anti-Semitism is not only tolerated, but institutionalized, and stand up against the arab and "progressive" hate and intimidation. They can engage in community assistance programs. They can engage in Jewish groups that study, and teach, and socialize, and travel, and learn. There are so many social action programs that help individual Jews, and the Jewish people, in America, in Israel, and throughout the world. They can help to "change" things for the better.
These are very dangerous times. I also, see an indirect relationship between the high rate of intermarriage and the Obama Jewish vote. It reflects a lack of sensitivity and concern for the safety of the Jewish people, and the naive willingness to vote for a "liberal" feel-good ideology for lack of an appreciation of the dangers posed to Jews by a radical "progressive" agenda.
Unfortunately, I also see a strategic reason to grow the Jewish community, given the Obama threat to Israel, which by definition is a threat to all Jews, and which in short order may become a more direct threat to American Jews. When your people are threatened, is not the time to indulge yourself with secondary issues. It does not mean you are "solely for yourself", but your first - primary obligation is to protect yourself, and to do so, you need to know your enemies. The old line, charity begins at home, comes to mind. And if I am not for myself ...?
I have always felt that the emphasis on Jewish continuity is morbid. I still do.
I have always felt that the emphasis on Jewish continuity is morbid. I still do.
So long as there are ultra-Orthodox Jews having lots of babies there will be no 'continuity crisis'. If the ReformConservatives and their social justice movements disappear, so be it.
Frank, I fully support your point of view. In addition, I question the so-often quoted 74-78% of American Jews who support Obama: of all my friends and family members (polled 24 people)we have only 2 supporters, so my statistics is more like 8% or less. We are not religious group for most parts, all highly educated professionals, including women, between 40 and 52. We are puzzled by the baby boomers infatuation with Obama. They must be 'reliving' their youth, or trying to justify having had a very easy ride through the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and now having brought this great country down to the state of moral and economic crisis. However, the main mystery for us remains how they manage to forget that by betraying Israel they doom all of us, including themselves and their own cildren. This is more than a sign of assimilation. This, in a way, is a death wish. They are eloquent, erudite, confident but lack the common sense of their granparents. My daughter is telling me that the baby boomers' children are aleady different from their parets. I certainly hope that it is true, and it is not going to be too late to undo the harm done to our people.
Notice how, in all his usual grandiose bombast, Frank ignored my question about his ties with Jews for Jesus!
He also seems to forget that the Jewish people was not created independent of the world. Contrary to his mindset, the Jews were not created to live an Amish-like existence, "in but not of" the world, to use the Christian phrasing. Once more, the Christian connection!
Face it, Frank, you are the most assimilated of all those commenting on this blog, since you insist upon analyzing American Jewry through a conservative Christian sectarian lens, including events in the Middle East. Sheygetz! Consider your bris revoked!