Posted on 10/09/2013 5:27:13 AM PDT by IbJensen
Why should American Jews bother to be Jewish? According to a new Pew Research Center survey of the American Jewish community, more and more American Jews have reached the conclusion that there is no reason to be Jewish.
Outside of the Orthodox Jewish community, intermarriage rates have reached 71 percent. Thirty-two percent of Jews born since 1980 and 22% of Jews overall do not describe themselves as Jews by religion. They base their Jewish identity on ancestry, ethnicity or culture.
Whereas 73% of Jews say that remembering the Holocaust is an essential part of being Jewish, only 19% said that observing Jewish law is a vital aspect of Jewish identity. Fourteen percent say eating Jewish foods is indispensable for their Jewish identity. Forty-two percent say that having a sense of humor is a critical part of being a Jew.
Gabriel Roth, an intermarried Jewish author, welcomes these numbers. In a column in Slate, Roth claimed that the reason most cultural Jews keep traditions of any kind is a sense of guilt toward their parents and previous generations of Jews. He believes that it’s time to get over the guilt. Keeping such traditions has “no intrinsic meaning.”
“How much value can ‘Jewish heritage’ have if it signifies nothing beyond its own perpetuation?” he asked sneeringly.
Obviously, the answer is no value. To do something you feel is intrinsically meaningless just because your forefathers did the same meaningless thing is a waste of time. If Judaism has nothing to offer beyond lox and Seinfeld, then there is no reason to remain Jewish.
The findings of the Pew survey, and indeed, sentiments like those that Roth described are no surprise to those who have been following the downward trajectory of the American Jewish community.
Numerous initiatives have been adopted over the past decade or so to try to reverse the trend toward assimilation and loss of Jewish identity. These initiatives, including websites like JDate that help Jewish singles find and marry one another, and Birthright, which has brought tens of thousands of young, largely unaffiliated Jews to Israel, have had a positive impact in slowing down the trend. But the move away from Judaism for non-Orthodox American Jews remains seemingly inexorable.
“We have tried a lot of different things and created a lot of wonderful programs,” explains political theorist Yoram Hazony, the founder of the Shalem Center and author of The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, published last year.
Hazony, who now heads the Herzl Institute, continues, “We’ve tried everything other than the central thing. Jews need to understand that there is an attractive and compelling idea that makes it valuable to be Jews.”
That idea, as Hazony explained in his recent book, is found first and foremost in the Bible.
Roth wrote, “If you believe that Jewish traditions are part of a covenant with God, of course you want your children to continue them.”
Yes, of course. But if you think that Judaism can be summed up so glibly, then you have no idea what it is that you are abandoning.
So in a sense, you are abandoning nothing. Because you cannot abandon what you never had in the first place.
And what Jews like Roth never had is basic Jewish literacy.
Hazony’s excellent book explains in easy, approachable language that the wisdom and philosophy imparted by the Hebrew Bible was purposely denied by the anti-Semitic philosophers of the Enlightenment. Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Hegel and other leading philosophers of the Enlightenment were vicious Jew haters. They sought to cleanse modern philosophy of all references to the Bible in a bid to write Jews and Judaism out of the history of ideas and the contemporary intellectual world.
This they accomplished by subsuming the Hebrew scriptures (like the New Testament) under a broader criticism of “work of revelation.” As a revealed text, (a divine covenant ordered by a deity with which none of us have direct dealings), the Hebrew scripture was then misrepresented as something that has no relevance for people trying to determine for themselves what it means to live a good, moral and just life. Those concepts, we were told, could only be learned from Greek philosophers, who, in turn, were falsely characterized as atheists.
Hazony does not simply expose the philosophical crime against the Jews undertaken by the Enlightenment philosophers. He demonstrates why the ideas found in the Bible are deeply relevant and important to our lives, and indeed, how they form the basis for man’s quest to live a good, moral life.
“The Jewish idea is in the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible and the rabbinical commentaries on the Tanach,” he explains.
“To the extent we care and see something worthwhile in these ideas then everything falls into place. When you take it all out, everything turns into a bagel – it all tastes good but there’s a big hole in the center where the idea is supposed to be.
“The Jews were the people who brought the idea that an individual was responsible for discovering truth and right and for bringing it into the world. That is the idea that freed mankind.
“That is the biblical idea. The Bible is about the expectation that a human being is going to take responsibility for discovering the truth and what’s right and devote his or her life to bringing what is right to the world.
“The fact that most Jews no longer study it, no longer remember it, means they stopped being part of the historic Jewish drama. It is being part of that great drama that makes people care whether their children receive a Jewish education and marry Jews, and that makes them support Israel. Without the great drama that we learn from the Bible, then Israel becomes meaningless and intermarriage becomes obvious,” Hazony concludes.
Orthodox Jews feel that the Holocaust is less essential to their Jewish identity than Conservative and Reform Jews, (66% of Orthodox, versus 78% and 77% of Conservative and Reform Jews, respectively). On the other hand, 69% of Orthodox Jews believe that being part of a Jewish community is essential to their Judaism. Just 40% and 25% of Conservative and Reform Jews, respectively, feel this way. And this makes sense.
The Holocaust was the most recent attempt of an oppressor to annihilate the Jews. In the 4,000-year history of the Jewish people, there have been dozens of attempts to annihilate us. The Jewish story is the story not of others’ attempts to destroy us, nor even of our capacity to withstand and survive these attempts. The Jewish story is the story of the lives we lived, the culture we developed, and the life of the mind that bound us together.
Jews who have learned the Bible know their history did not start in 1933. They know that the Jewish story is the story of a people that believes so strongly in its mission to bring the liberating idea of personal responsibility to choose good and life over evil and death that it refused to surrender to its oppressors.
The Jewish drama, as set out in the Bible, is the story of a nation that from the outset and until the present day chooses freedom over submission, while maintaining allegiance to a sacred trust, and an ancient people and a promised land.
When you understand this, remaining Jewish is a privilege, not a sacrifice.
And, alas, when you fail to understand this, leaving Judaism not a tragedy but simply a natural progression.
It’s not the question of being Jewish. It’s you >are< Jewish. It’s something you’re born with. It’s not like being American is some sort of culture/religion with certain customs. Maybe in the US or the rest of the world but in Israel ..... if the article is somehow true then the Jews would leave Israel to the so-called Palestinians.
Jews-In-Name-Only (JINOs) are intermarrying, turning gay and getting abortions. They are 78% Democrat. Meanwhile, religious Jews are having 8 kids per family. They are 68% Republican. It will take a while, but 20 years from now, American Jews will be a solid conservative bloc. It is worth the wait.
Please do her a favor. Do NOT marry her.
Your post #37 is excellent, but shouldn’t you have listed Karl Marx along with lil’ Siggie Pooh in your closing list of prominent ‘Jews” with conflicts consequent to their confusions?
Judaism is a religion of communal concern. When you take G-d out of the equation you are left with a structure without morality, which expresses itself through coercive utopian systems like communism and socialism.
I love that graphic....saving it just so I can pull it up and look at it.
No future generation of Jews, and no Jew alienated from his people, can say, “Moses made a covenant with our ancestors but not with us. We didn’t give our consent. We are not bound.” To preclude this, he says these words:
Deuteronomy 29:13-14 “But not only with you am I making this covenant and this oath: but with those standing here with us today before the Lord, our God, and [also] with those who are not here with us, this day.”
LOL
Are you saying that if the grandchild is baptized Christian, the grandparents on the Jewish side will not talk to them?
I am saying that the grandparents, aunts aunts and uncles will walk on eggshells around their daughter and grandchildren and try to figure out how to lead their grandchildren to embrace Judaism proudly. This will cause alienation in the family and if they succeed it will introduce a separation between the mother and her children on one hand and the father on the other.
Not Jewish though Torah is at the center of my life.
If you aren’t practicing, what are you walking on eggshells about? Would you rather your grand kids go to mass every week with a full spiritual life or go to Temple twice a year?
We believe in the same God. It’s not like I’m asking her to deny her belief in God.
Why? If she’s fine with raising her kids Catholic, I don’t see how it affects her Jewish heritage.
I feel like you think I have a problem with the Jewish religion. I don’t. My problem is the fact that many American Jewish rabbis (usually reform) actively promote an agenda contrary to Scripture. At a time when social conservative values are under attack, religious conservatives should be united. On one side we have those who believe in God and all his glory and on the other side we have the godless Liberals who only believe in the State.
....”So in a sense, you are abandoning nothing. Because you cannot abandon what you never had in the first place.
And what Jews like Roth never had is basic Jewish literacy..”
Sounds like a lot of other progressive groupies. We now officially have JINO’s; Jews in Name Only. Apparently these Jews do not associate the ancient texts of their forefathers - the Talmud (i.e. the old Testament to Christians) as having any consequence to their very being. Just more road kill along the progressive highway. JINO’s can join the CINO’s as folks who identify as being part of a group, but are not even aware or care about what that designation means. Their relationship to their Creator is fractured.
Torah of Israel
Land of Israel
People of Israel
They have chosen to remain Jewish although they are not practicing Judaism. If you ask them about it, they will tell you that it doesn’t feel right for them to give up their “faith”. I understand your question but in 57 years on this earth have never met a Jew, whether a believer or not, who felt pleased that is child or grandchild was becoming active in another church.
Even if they are culturally Jewish (bagels and Seinfeld?) they remember the scene in Fiddler on the Roof when Tevye’s daughter married a Christian and he went into mourning. I am almost sure that they won’t do that themselves, but I am equally sure that they will think of that scene and relate to it.
Yup
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