Uber-philanthropist Michael Steinhardt has done more than most people on the planet to keep American Judaism strong. And he's
more than a little despondent
The crisis is expressed not only in rates of intermarriage, which seem to hover around 50 percent, but in our population statistics, which are at best stagnant and more probably reflective of a decline. American Jews are marrying later and having fewer children relative to previous Jewish generations and to their non-Jewish counterparts.
But the crisis is not limited to demography. In the area of Jewish literacy, popular films such as Garden State, which take for granted the remoteness of temple attendance for contemporary Jews, only scratch the surface of the malaise. A silent majority of non-Orthodox Jews are well on their way to Jewish disappearance. They have no representation in our communal structures; nor does the community occupy itself with the challenge of preventing their slipping away.
The article is by super-philanthropist Michael Steinhardt, and it's worth reading the whole thing. He makes a single critical, and often overlooked, point:
American Jews have yet to understand that victimization is an insufficient basis for identity. Even in an era of increased openness and tolerance, the American Jewish community believes that community cohesion depends on external threats and bogeymen.
American Judaism has fallen for the same maliase that has afflicted other minority groups in America: ongoing participation in unseemly, race-to-the-bottom claims for victim badges. Tracing how we got to this point would be a non-trivial task: 1960s Jewish activists who took their sensibilities with them into Jewish leadership, political discourse about minorities that only makes sense in particular ways, and cross-pollination with other identity groups all contribute to these strategies. But there's also a more banal dynamic: Jewish student leaders are trained in the same way that other leaders of minority groups are trained, and that's still locked in the tired model of 1960s based student activism. Showing solidarity, writing petitions, and protesting are all part and parcel of this model. The problem is that all of those acts - the performance of which literally is student activism - are fundamentally reactionary. They are reactive to some percieved slight rather than proactive celebrations of identity. And the kind of petulant resentment that they're built around can never sustain a political strategy.
His solution - revitalizing Jewish communities by emphasizing Jewish values - doesn't go far enough to solve the suffocating fog that is young Jews' apathy towards their heritage. In fact, "day schools, camps, youth movements and Hillel, and Israel travel and study" are the status quo. From the moment they can be shipped off to Hebrew school, American Jewish children are provided with an almost limitless number of ways to be "connected" to Judaism. And yet somehow prepackaged life cycles, canned trips to Israel, and lessons on counting in Hebrew have all failed to ignite a commitment to Judaism. In the meantime, Islam and Christianity is growing throughout the United States. College and high school students shout their devotions in gigantic stadiums.
These stadiums are filled with devotees because their religious leaders tell their followers that they have the truth - and moreso, that accepting the truth and living according to it is a task only the strongest and bravest can live up to. Of course the young flock to that kind of message. Christian evangelicals, for instance, tell young Christians that their religion is true, that Christians are blessed, and that the rest of the world is wrong. In response, young Jews are told that they can believe whatever they want and that the sum total of their religious obligation involves bringing some canned goods from home around the High Holidays.
This argument is not about Orthodox vs. Reform or religious vs. secular. A few years ago, I was privileged to see one of the most prominent Reform rabbis in Pittsburgh just absolutely shred his congregation for pulling their children out of Hebrew school to go trick-or-treating. The basis of his sermon - and this is so simple and so crucial - was simply that Jewish values are superior to secular values. He strongly reminded those assembled that Jews must fulfill Jewish commitments first and follow Jewish values primarily. These are the kinds of words that get people riled up. These are the kinds of demands that people respond to. These are the kinds of words that are necessary to carry Judaism to the next generation.
Youth are the lifeblood of any culture, and so the crisis revolving around young Jewish identity is of staggering consequence. Assimilation is skyrocketing, anti-Semitism is sweeping the globe, and the Jewish State itself is in existential danger. Here we face neither the prospect of victory nor of defeat - neither the Six Day War nor Massada. What American Judaism faces is destruction by a quiet shrug of disinterest, while we all drown in the bags and bags of the chocolate coins that threaten to become the totality of Jewish lived experience.
