The American Jewish paradox

Writing in The New York Times, Forward editor J. J. Goldberg accused the organized Jewish community of setting off two "false alarms" with the massive Jewish population surveys issued in 1990 and 2000. The first survey shocked American Jews by finding an intermarriage rate of 52 percent, now revised down to 43 percent. The second, according to Goldberg, scared the community into thinking that it is shrinking, from 5.5 million then to 5.2 million now.

Goldberg says the United Jewish Communities (UJC) knows better and "owes it to itself and its public to step forward and state plainly what it knows to be true: American Jews are not disappearing." Has the UJC "invented a crisis" for its own reasons, as Goldberg alleges? As much as I tend to share Goldberg's healthy suspicion of organizational motives, the opposite may be closer to the truth.

Let's take the revised intermarriage rates that Goldberg seems to find comfort in. The latest survey found that, from 1985 to 1995, the rate stayed even at 43 percent, then rose to 47 percent in 1996 to 2001. The survey describes this by noting that the rate of increase has slowed and that intermarriage rates have "stabilized in the mid-40s range." This is supposed to be good news? True, between 1970 and 1985 intermarriage zoomed up from 13 percent to 43 percent. But what is "stable" about the current high rate, especially when that rate continues to increase?

Perhaps we have forgotten what the problem is with intermarriage in the first place. It is not a form of xenophobia or chauvinism, but returns back to the hard numbers. The survey found that the intermarriage rate among children of intermarried parents is a whopping 74 percent, compared to 22 percent for those whose parents are both Jewish. As the report puts it with characteristic understatement, intermarriage "perpetuates itself." A community in which roughly half is marrying out is a community that is losing members at a great rate. Such a community can only survive if it enjoys replenishing forces at a greater rate, or if intermarriage levels started to trend down again.

The survey did have some good news in this regard. A basic replenishing force is full-time Jewish education, which is strongly associated with every measure of Jewish affiliation, including lower intermarriage rates, stronger connection to Israel, and greater Jewish giving. The survey found that only about 7 percent of adults 45 and over attended Jewish day schools or yeshivas, compared to 29 percent in the 6 to 24 age group. The trend here is clearly in the right direction.

Regarding an even more basic measure, birth rates, the news is less rosy. Jews are older, marry older, and have fewer children on average in comparison with Americans generally. The Jewish birthrate of 1.9 children per woman is below replacement level, and therefore adds to the downward pressure on the community's numbers from intermarriage.

If those behind this report had really wanted to sound the alarm, they would would have done what many population studies do: make projections based on existing trends. Such estimates can indeed be alarmist and misleading, as the "population bomb" projections were that claimed we would all be starving or crowded off the planet in a few years.

As it turns out, and as some correctly said at the time, world population was stabilizing, not ballooning out of control. In fact, current projections show world population peaking at somewhere around 10 billion and then beginning to shrink, since in many countries fertility rates have dropped below replacement level, and this trend is continuing.

REGARDING WORLD population, "current trends" did not continue, rendering doomsday projections based on those trends false. For American Jews, current trends can easily be projected out to show the community disappearing. The report, if anything, shied away from sounding the alarm of what would happen if current trends did continue. It therefore never got to the even more important question: What, if anything, can be done to reverse these trends? What happened to world population was that fertility rates began to drop sharply as education and wealth spread, and people adjusted to the fact that they did not have to have so many children for some to survive. There is, however, no natural process that will cause intermarriage rates to drop or Jewish birth rates to go up.

Or maybe there is. The dramatic growth in Jewish day school attendance over the last generation may be the beginning of something revolutionary. There is a growing trend of communities raising money locally to build Jewish day schools, and it is becoming increasingly acceptable for the non-Orthodox majority to send their children to such schools. The snowball of intermarriage is colliding with the snowball of Jewish education, and the question is which one breaks up and which one keeps going.

Even intermarriage is changing, in that it used to be that intermarried couples were almost guaranteed to be lost to the community. This is no longer so cut and dried, but it is still an open question whether the community will succeed in actually adding to itself by converting non-Jewish spouses in greater numbers.

The paradox of American Jewry is the combination of decay and renaissance. Those of us who moved to Israel largely to increase the chances of our children staying Jews must look back at American Jewry with both concern and envy.

Whether in the Diaspora or here, the challenge for Jewry is to develop a form of Judaism fit for the modern age. Judaism reinvented itself twice before: first in the transition from a loosely grounded people to one centered on a Temple and the land, then to a people centered on the law and survival in exile. Now we have to make our third transition: to a people living both split between our own land and the Diaspora, and to a situation where Judaism must compete with the attractions of secular modernity.

In Israel, none of the three main streams the secular, the modern Orthodox, and the haredim seems about to spawn this necessary synthesis between Judaism and modern life. The most likely place for it to arise is America. American Jewry, then, represents both our demographic hopes and fears. We should be alarmed by the results of the NJPS, but there is reason to believe that, spurred by a warranted sense of urgency, that "current trends" can be turned around.

>>>>>The paradox of American Jewry is the combination of decay and renaissance<<<<<

If only this is the only paradox. I believe the following is an illustration what "people born into Jewish families" can do to inflict indirect harm to Israel.

1.The majority of Jewish Americans would not consider a vacation in Israel, let alone Aliya.

2.Some Jewish Americans do not know what the word "shoah" means.

3. Some Americans born into Jewish Families conveniently forget and conveniently remember Jewish roots.For example, Madeline Albright "suddenly remembered" that she is Jewess in 1999. She also conveniently forgot that Serbs sheltered her during WWII because she, as a Jewess was in peril. Presidential hopeful Gen. Wesley Clark is born as a Jew, raised as a Southern Baptist and converted to RC.

4. During Bosnia civil war NJCRAC has publicly supported radical islamist lies and requested from Jewish American organizations to do the same. NJCRAC and some other Jewish American organisations were on the same side with SAUDI ARABIA and IRAN. Taking the heat off Israel, perhaps? Or providing fertile ground for Al-Qaeda? . 9-11 was a thank you note from their Muslim protegees

5. During Kosovo conflict, majority of Jewish Americans, especially those in Clinton Administration publicly supported the lies of KLA, an Al-Qaeda ally. Those lies backfired with Intifada because Arafat and his PA terroists use KLA experience and exploit the public immage of 'poor innocent Muslims' spun by partisan media during Balkan wars.

With their overt support of Islamist lies, they have indirectly helped Arafat who publicly announced PA will use KLA script. Even worse, American Jewish organizations were silent and did not protest misuse of Holocaust to propel such lies.

6. Some Jewish Americans who did not lift a finger to help Jews stranded on SS St.Louis escape sure death in concentration camps eagerly signed up for reparation funds after WWII.

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