To the Editor:

The article by Jonathan D. Sarna [“The Secret of Jewish Continuity,” October 1994] is disturbing because it encourages optimism and complacency at a time when there is no clear justification for either. The fact that Jews have survived despite what has occurred in the past has no bearing on what will happen in the future.

Mr. Sarna cites evidence to show that intermarriage is also prevalent among other religious and ethnic groups in America and that they remain relatively unconcerned by it. But this provides little solace to Jews who, in contrast to others, are in jeopardy of becoming an “endangered species” unless there is a major reversal of demographic trends.

Statistics have shown that preserving Jewish continuity depends on: (1) excellent Jewish education; (2) family observance of rituals in the home and synagogue so that these become an ingrained, enjoyable way of life for children; and (3) meaningful trips to Israel and identification with the Jewish state.

A concerted effort to accomplish these goals is needed rather than a reliance on the fact that things have always worked out pretty well in the past.

S.W. Schoenbaum
Hollywood, Florida

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To the Editor:

Jonathan D. Sarna discusses the . . . alarm of the American Jewish community over the rapid loss of its young people to “assimilation and rampant intermarriage.” . . . His analysis of the shift in identity among Americans from “descent” to “consent” goes to the very heart of this dilemma, and I only wish he had devoted more space to it. Here is an area in which Jewish leaders could exert a profound reversal of current trends if they would observe the issue through secular eyes.

The crucial question that needs addressing, of course, is why this shift has taken place. What is it that has caused Jewish youth to break away from their ancestral bonds? The obvious answer is that traditional Judaism no longer satisfies their needs. . . .

Modern youngsters are much too questioning, much too analytical—in short, much too sophisticated to put up with Jewish ritual as currently practiced in American synagogues, where they are confronted with liturgical services virtually 100-percent dedicated to praising and beseeching a God who has not, in their estimation, shown particular favor to their people over the last two millennia. . . . They hear too many tendentious sermons and endure long, wearisome, and tuneless cantorial chanting in a language most cannot follow. As a result, religious services bore them. . . .

If Judaism wishes to recapture these young, thinking minds, if it wishes once more to fill its sanctuaries, it must adapt itself to changed conditions. . . . When synagogues decrease their poetically redundant prayers to the Almighty on Friday nights and substitute more discussions of Jewish ethics and the ramifications of current world problems on their lives, Jewish youth will feel challenged and attracted. . . .

Stanley P. Kessel
Hollywood, Florida

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To the Editor:

Jonathan D. Sarna . . . describes four “transformations” in the larger American society that have had an impact on Jewish continuity. . . .

The first has to do with ethnicity. Jews are losing their ethnic identity. If Jews wish to remain distinctive in American society, where their ethnicity has blended with that of white Europeans, they need an alternative, an identity located outside ethnicity. The best alternative for Jews is to reexamine a religious identity. . . .

The second “transformation” concerns religion: Judaism itself is becoming marginalized, is losing status, in American society because the number of its adherents is small and declining. Obviously, the best way to fight this is to increase the number of adherents. But there has not been an increase in Jewish births, so an alternative must be found.

The third “transformation” Mr. Sarna mentions is “Marital Patterns.” Here the issue revolves around the Jewish need to justify opposition to intermarriage. This problem also underscores the need for a religious identity, for without it the argument for endogamy is very much weakened. . . .

In discussing the final “transformation,” “Identity Patterns,” Mr. Sarna states that in American society, identity has become much more a matter of consent than descent, a fact which is reflected in the statistic he cites that 25 percent of Americans have changed their faith or denomination at least once. This “transformation” can . . . show us a way to increase Jewish numbers.

If religious Jews sought and welcomed converts, Jewish ethnicity would be superseded by an emphasis on religion, for conversion focuses precisely on religious identity. Welcoming converts would increase Jewish numbers in a way that supplements Jewish births. . . . Such seeking of converts could focus on those Gentiles currently married to or the children of born Jews.

A welcoming attitude toward converts is grounded in traditional Jewish religious thought and was practiced at crucial times in Jewish history. I think the renewal of this ancient tradition could be one of the secrets of Jewish continuity.

Lawrence J. Epstein
Stony Brook, New York

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Jonathan D. Sarna writes:

S.W. Schoenbaum and Stanley P. Kessel, both residents of Hollywood, Florida, seem less interested in my analysis than in using the Jewish-continuity debate to advance their own preconceived and diametrically opposite communal agendas. Mr. Schoenbaum believes that assimilation is the problem and tradition is the solution, while Mr. Kessel believes that tradition is the problem and assimilation is the solution. In fact, as I tried to show in my article, the challenges faced by contemporary Jews are vastly more complicated, and can only be understood within the context of recent changes in the American social environment. Still, given the choice, I prefer Mr. Schoenbaum’s proposals to Mr. Kessel’s, since the latter’s were tried long ago and found wanting. I do not, however, share Mr. Schoenbaum’s blind faith in statistics, nor do I delude myself into believing that the only thing required to accomplish his goals is “concerted effort.”

Lawrence J. Epstein, eager to convert the Gentiles, shares with Mr. Kessel an affinity for ideas long since tested by American Jews and found wanting. There is nothing new in his idea that Jewish peoplehood (“ethnicity”) should be superseded by an emphasis on religion: 19th-century Classical Reform Jews preached the same misguided notion, and abandoned it. The real challenge, as I have argued elsewhere, is to make certain that converts take their rightful place within the peoplehood of Israel, so that they are not merely Jews by choice but Jews by commitment—a commitment that obligates them and their descendants. Mr. Epstein’s proposal would, in effect, create one-generation Jews without Jewish parents and without Jewish children. This is surely not the kind of discontinuity that will promote long-term Jewish revitalization.