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PDF FormatAt the start of this century, American Jewry’s political leadership formulated a strategy for the integration of the Jewish people in their new promised land. Through the abandonment of the myriad ritual obligations their tradition had hitherto demanded of them, and the adoption of the appearance and norms of their host country, the new immigrant Jewish masses would stand a chance of finding acceptance, and even success, in America—and all, they reasoned in earnest, without sacrificing their commitment to the Jewish people and its heritage.
Today, the failure of the Jewish secularist experiment in the United States lies bare for the world to see: In the past three decades, America’s Jewish population has suffered a steep decline, most American Jews are intermarrying, few non-Jewish spouses convert, and intermarried couples raise only twenty-eight percent of their children as Jews. In two generations, the Jewish population in America will probably be cut in half.
In Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America, Elliott Abrams pulls few punches in his effort to address the problem of American Jewry: “The results of the National Jewish Population Study of 1990, and several other major works of research, draw the portrait of a community in decline, facing in fact demographic disaster.” In contrast, Abrams points to a thriving Orthodox community as uncomfortable evidence that not only was Jewish secularism the wrong way to go about preserving the Jews, it was probably the opposite of what was needed: Increased levels of observance and Jewish education, it turns out, are directly linked to any measure of ׂcontinuity,׃ and today there are virtually no social or professional hindrances to a full observance of Jewish tradition.
The problem, though, is that Jewish secularism has long left the confines of communal strategy, and has become ingrained as an article of faith among the vast majority of non-observant Jews in America. Where once the Tora, the observance of halacha and the faith in the covenant with God formed the central pillars of Jewish identity, American Jews now look to “social justice” (read: the liberal political agenda), anti-Semitism and the Holocaust to keep the Jewish people together. A new faith has arisen, and Judaism the religion has been replaced with “Jewishness.”
The wealthy, non-observant German Jews who dominated the turn-of-the-century American Jewish community actually set out to create a new Jewish identity, and new institutions to support it. The life of the traditional Jew revolved around religious observance, Tora study and locally centered charity; the central institutions were the synagogue, the yeshiva and the home. The new Jewish identity, on the other hand, placed a greater emphasis on impersonal “social action” activities, necessitating the creation of a range of new public organizations.
First, a phalanx of large-scale, professionalized charities, including the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the United Jewish Appeal (UJA), integrated the massive wave of Eastern European Jewish immigrants into the American mainstream. This work served two complementary purposes. By taking some of the rough edges off the new arrivals, who would always be identified in the public mind with their more urbane coreligionists, it insured that they would not impede the Germans’ steady progress toward full social equality. Moreover, the nobility of the charitable work allowed the leadership to enshrine tzedaka as the central form of Jewish expression—establishing a secularized version of the “prophetic tradition” to replace the Tora and its many commandments. At the same time, the secular leadership established the AntiDefamation League (ADL) to fight anti-Semitism—never a life-or-death problem in America, but an occasionally jarring reminder that the ideal of full participation in society had yet to be reached.
As the decades passed, the centrality of community organizations in American Jewish life increased. They grew in size, and their missions evolved. The emergence of Israel and Soviet Jewry as causes greatly strengthened the charitable organizations. Israel’s increasing reliance on American patronage gave birth to aipac. The Holocaust gave new meaning to the battle against anti-Semitism, and eventually grew into a cause of its own.
The political mission expanded and changed as well. The fight for social equality had been won by mid-century, yet America remained a devoutly Christian country. Public expressions of the majority religion continued to make many Jews uneasy about the completeness of their victory. So the “defense” organizations, as they came to be called, adopted the position that society itself must be further secularized—all in the name of protecting Jews. Forming the vanguard of the “absolute separationist” coalition, they began to oppose virtually any expression of religion in public life. This radical secularism went hand in hand with the political liberalism of most Jews: Abandoning the Republican affiliation of the original German Jewish secularists, the vast majority of Jews embraced first the Democratic Party and then the civil rights movement. The latter was also promoted on “defense” grounds: By supporting equal rights for all minorities, the movement would make America safer for the Jews. More generally, liberal politics became the embodiment of the “prophetic tradition,” the vehicle through which tikun olam (“repairing the world”) would be realized.
And thus a new, American “Jewishness” was born on the ruins of the old faith. No longer were study, belief and observance the touchstones of the “good Jew”; instead, participation in organized communal activities—from industrialized charity, to fighting anti-Semitism, to saving Soviet Jewry, to supporting Israel—became the essence of what it meant to be Jewish. The irony was that this transformation, which seemed at the time crucial to the survival of the Jews in America, contained in it the seeds of their demise.
The fight against anti-Semitism in America was always a bit overblown in proportion to the threat; or, to put it more charitably, it was merely the outer edge of the overall struggle for social acceptance. In our generation, that struggle is long over. The intermarriage statistics demonstrate that most American Jews have no fear of Gentiles, and no problems gaining their acceptance. In fact, there is considerable evidence that the Jewish organizations, who would like to take much credit for social integration, were merely pushing on an open door. After all, Japanese Americans experienced far worse than the inconveniences and exclusions with which Jews had to contend: They were massively and officially persecuted, as recently as half a century ago. This has not stopped them from achieving full equality today, without anything resembling the Jewish network of community organizations.
By now, then, the alarums of the defense organizations simply breed cynicism and hypocrisy. Abrams cites an amusing report by Earl Raab: ”According to a 1985 survey by the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council, almost a third of the Jews in one northern California region said that they did not think non-Jews would vote for a Jew for Congress. At the time they said this, all three of their elected Representatives in that area were Jewish.” Just as all good liberals used to say they feared nuclear war, but didn’t build bomb shelters or move to southwest Oregon, so it seems that “fear” of anti- Semitism has become a fashion, rather than a genuine concern. One simply believes in anti-Semitism because it is a part of one’s “Jewisnness.”
The Holocaust is a stronger illustration of the same principle. Tens of millions of community dollars have gone to museums, memorials and educational programs to keep alive the memory of this tragedy. And it has worked: As Abrams points out, “Eighty-five percent of American Jews say the Holocaust is very important to their sense of being Jewish. Fewer Jews say that about God, the Torah, or any other factor.” Again, American Jews have invested scarce resources in developing a secular source for Jewish identity, but one which, as a generation of survivors passes from us and the Holocaust fades inevitably into the dark history of Jewish persecution in exile, cannot be transmitted to future generations, and cannot serve as an effective barrier to assimilation.
