To the Editor:
. . . In response to Edward Norden’s “Counting the Jews” [October 1991], let me say that there is only one reason that . . . compels one to be a Jew and makes being a member of the Jewish people a thing of greatness and destiny. . . . There is a God, Who is the God of history, Who created the world, . . . Who appeared before an entire people and declared, “Now, therefore, if you will keep My covenant then shall you be a special treasure unto Me above all the nations.”. . .
It is this law, this Torah, that created the Jews as a nation and as a nation with a reason to be different. If not for this, the Jew becomes as anachronistic as the Bulgarian or the Canadian or the Frenchman, as absurd and as dangerous a propagator of nationalism as any of the others. . . . If not for this, why not melt and indeed dissolve? If not for this, what need for the pathetic, illogical, and costly suburban temple and its services at which we Jews raise high the scroll of Moses and cry out “This is the Law that Moses set before the Children of Israel, by the word of God,” and don’t believe a word of it? . . . Moses would not recognize the Judaism of the suburban temples; he would descend the mountain again and smash the golden calves from Miami Beach to Malibu. . . .
To be a Jew is to understand that God is alive and well and that, like it or not, we are His people, sworn to obey His law, which is not some philosophical plaything to be bandied about in havurot or adult-education classes, but clear and precise instructions contained in the written and oral laws that combine to make up the total Torah. . . .
David Fein
Scarsdale, New York
_____________
To the Editor:
. . . I find myself in disagreement with Edward Norden’s diagnosis of the causes of the shrinking of American Jewry. He suggests that the prevailing atmosphere of general acceptance in American society is primarily responsible for growing assimilation and that, by implication, only a measure of anti-Semitism has prevented Jews from being submerged into the melting process. He seems to lose sight of the fact that Jews assimilated in large numbers in 18th-century England, in 19th-century Germany, and, indeed, as far back as Roman times, despite hostile attitudes and the existence of officially sanctioned discrimination.
What has kept Diaspora Jews from disappearing into the dominant society has always been a unique kind of communal structure which is still in place in Orthodox communities, where the top priority continues to be an all-encompassing Jewish education well into adulthood. Reinforcing this total commitment to Jewish schools is a pervasive understanding that sending one’s children to public schools is unthinkable.
When the Conservative and Reform movements set up their institutions in the late 1800’s, no attempt was made to put into place such an all-embracing educational system. As the cornerstones for magnificent synagogues were laid, no thought was given to building day schools. The three-day-a-week, two-hour Hebrew-school sessions provided a little knowledge but not much else. . . .
The question that has haunted me for years is why almost all the Catholic families in my community, which is about 40-percent Jewish and 40-percent Catholic, send their children to parochial schools (including high school and often Catholic colleges), whereas only a tiny minority of Jewish residents, though temple members, enroll their children in Jewish day schools, which, increasingly, only parents with substantial means can afford.
Thirty years too late, many couples look back with deep regret upon their failure to immerse their children in an atmosphere of Jewish learning and Jewish life. When their children were young they innocently followed what everyone else was doing and what seemed to be sanctioned by the religious authorities as well. By the time these children were dispersed to colleges all over the country, their Jewish identity had long since eroded, if indeed it was ever formed.
Ruth Janko
Bayside, New York
_____________
To the Editor:
In his fine article, “Counting the Jews,” Edward Norden provides the shocking results of the $400,000 Federation of Jewish Philanthropies survey. “Of Jewish marriages dating from before 1965, 10 percent were intermarriages; from 1965-74, 25 percent; from 1974-84, 42 percent; and since 1985 more than half.” Still more shocking than the figures for intermarriage are those for apostasy: 210,000 Jews born and raised as such, have converted; 1.1 million products of intermarriage are practicing or being raised in another religion.
The real shock, however, is that in the wake of these statistics, there has been no shock, no convulsion, no radical reallocation of funds, no new ideas, no strategy for stemming the tide, no Operation Exodus out of assimilation and back into Judaism. Given the deplorable level of Jewish education and religious life, the present malaise was perfectly predictable. Indeed, there were those who predicted it ten, twenty, thirty years ago, and more. But to no avail. If the plumbing breaks down, that is an emergency which must be corrected. But no such emergency was felt by our national organizations. Nor will it be felt today as a result of the latest tragic survey.
And I refer not only to the local Jewish Federations. The religious agencies, for example, have not done much better. I know the Conservative movement best. What new idea has it had since the creation of the excellent network of Ramah summer camps and the Solomon Schechter day schools several generations ago? Reform for a while sent up signs of hope by affirming Zionism and reclaiming parts of the tradition it had abandoned, only to counter this healthy tendency with the adoption of patrilinealism (the more easily to affiliate intermarried couples) and to obliterate it altogether by undermining the family with homosexual rabbis. Orthodoxy, on the other hand, has known what to do, and has done it, mobilizing its limited resources to create a network of day schools which are paying off handsomely today. It is ironic that the religious body least able, intellectually or sociologically, to offer a cogent way of Jewish living and thinking for the modern American Jew seems to be doing so most successfully. It is difficult to believe, however, that its fundamentalism and ever narrowing application of Jewish law will appeal to more than a small minority. . . .
The options are not . . . limited to Orthodoxy or Zionism; we need a normative American Judaism which is both reverent toward tradition and relevant to our lives today. Instead of surveys, we need strategies to stem the present tide of vulgarity . . . which has invaded Jewish religious and communal life; we need bold proposals for action, model schools and synagogues, and generous funding. . . .
Twenty-five years ago or so at a gala black-tie dinner for an annual meeting in Toronto of the Jewish Federations, the main speaker, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, was introduced just after a report had been given on a planned quarter-million-dollar survey of the condition of the American Jewish community. Heschel rose, approached the microphone, and proceeded to address the wealthy chairman of the dinner. “Do you have a penny?” he asked. To the amusement of the audience and the consternation of the chairman, Heschel insisted on the requested penny until he received it. Holding the coin aloft, he said: “Mr. Chairman, I can save the Federation a quarter of a million dollars. I shall give you the results of your planned survey of the status of the American Jewish community for this penny, and I shall do it in two [Yiddish] words—takke shlekht [pretty bad]!
“Now spend your money on doing something about it!”
Samuel H. Dresner
Jewish Theological Seminary
New York City
_____________
To the Editor:
Edward Norden’s article provokes three comments, the first of which is partly a technical point about statistics. Using totals or averages as he does is the standard and easiest way to describe a group and to predict its future. However, if the group is composed of two segments which are following quite different paths, then using a total—or average—to cover both segments will conceal the interesting dynamics and may prevent the statistics from having predictive power. My favorite example of this mistake is attempting to predict how long it would take to cut down a tree by taking the average of the time it would take for someone using a chain saw and for someone using a pocket knife. . . .
It is not unreasonable to think that there are two groups of Jews in the U.S. today: a large group that is steadily growing smaller through assimilation and low birth rates, and a small group that is growing rapidly because it is vibrantly successful, attracting others, and choosing to have more children. This second group includes not just Hasidim in black coats, but also educated Jews who are not afraid to participate in the modern world—many of whom have chosen more Jewish education and observance than their parents, and whose lives joyously center on their Judaism. . . .
Today the first group is so much larger that it dominates the statistical picture and conceals the dynamics that we need to see in order to know what to do. . . .
My second point is that Mr. Norden greatly understates the matter when he talks about the worldwide proportion of Jews “continuing to shrink.” . . . To look at the number of Jews in relation to the rest of the world population we need to consider that part of the rest of the world that we can touch. In the past it was a very small segment because most people were isolated in traditional villages. But in the next century or so the number of people who have enough education to relate to the world will increase by some eight billion. In relation to that category of people, the proportion of Jews will not just shrink, but plummet—even if the absolute number of Jews does not decline at all. . . . At the same time, however, this means that we will have a greater potential audience for our message in the next century than we have had in all the years since Moses gave it to us.
My third point is the most fundamental. Mr. Norden misses the current challenge to Judaism when he concludes by asking, “Must a smaller Jewish people . . . necessarily be a weaker . . . or a less consequential one as it begins its next 4,000 years?” More likely there are two possible paths for Judaism in the future, and neither is the path of gentle decline sketched in is article. One possible path is that of success, where Jews learn to make their Judaism a joy and a strength . . . , and as a result they grow in numbers. The other path, continued division and failure to maintain commitment, is likely to lead within a century or so to the virtual elimination of Judaism as it has existed, and of Israel.
The number of Jews in the future does not depend on the factors Mr. Norden discusses with such grace and mastery, but on whether Judaism can become a successful religion. What is required is not primarily changes in Jewish law or in the nature of the religion, but in the ways in which the religion is actually practiced. . . .
Only if Judaism becomes more successful for most Jews (the test is whether it helps them to raise children of good character) can it succeed in Judaism’s task of being a light to the nations. . . .
Jewish birth rates and assimilation are not independent variables. They will be determined by the success of Judaism as a religion. If living Judaism becomes more true to itself, Judaism will become successful and Jewish birth rates will go up, assimilation will go down, and conversions to Judaism (at first mainly by descendants of Jews) will multiply. If not, instead of the comfortably shrinking future envisaged by Mr. Norden, there will be an increase in the momentum of Jewish decline comparable to the speed with which someone falling from the top of the Empire State Building goes by, say, the tenth floor.
Max Singer
Chevy Chase, Maryland
_____________
To the Editor:
Edward Norden credits me with writing a “notorious article”; characterizes me as “the most pessimistic of the pessimists”; and reports that as a result of this article—“The American Jewish Population Explosion,” Midstream, October 1977—I “was denounced far and wide as an alarmist and a terrible demographer.” I am modestly pleased to accept Mr. Norden’s accolades because he proceeds to report current data that disturbingly support the projections of the U.S. Jewish population erosion about which I speculated fourteen years ago.
Now he has positioned himself for similar denunciation by the same types who expressed displeasure at what I wrote. As he reports, there still are Jewish communal and organizational leaders, superficial commentators such as Charles Silberman, and even academics who cannot quite cope with reality. These are the types who react in alarm, e.g., “It can’t happen here,” and reach for straws in the wind, e.g., “The Hasidim will make up the deficit.”
I did not set out to seek notoriety; I am not a confirmed pessimist; and I am not a demographer. But I was pleasantly surprised that my piece provoked some discussion, . . . because that was its modest intent. The “notorious” speculations were prompted by the results of a demographic exercise conducted by two colleagues at the Harvard Center for Population Studies who are card-carrying demographers.
I was astonished at the numbers, and though they may have been statistical artifacts, they nevertheless suggested a trend in the U.S. population which in fact has occurred and accelerated in the intervening years.
I take no pleasure in the fact that the pessimistic projections reported in my piece were confirmed by the 1990 survey. The Jewish population erosion, current and prospective, is a depressing reality. And the 1990 survey has been buttressed by other authoritative work that reports the actual behavior of the offspring of mixed marriages. . . .
The key issue is the retention rate—the expression of Jewish identity by the offspring of mixed marriages. Mr. Norden cites the distressing trends reported in the 1990 survey: 72 percent of the children of mixed marriages do not identify as Jews, as the mixed-marriage rate itself has climbed from 9 percent before 1985 to 52 percent since 1985. It is difficult to put these numbers in a favorable light.
Everyone is looking for the magic bullet, but judging from the numbers and trends, the damage control is not working. The Reform movement has redefined Jewish law to ease entry into the Jewish community and there is increasing interest in outreach to the unconverted and unaffiliated. But even in light of fully justified anxieties, the organized Jewish community, with its ambitious range of concerns and the competing claims on its declining resources, still does not make the retention of its population base its first priority. . . .
Today’s challenge is the survival of large numbers of committed Jews in a free and open society. In terms of survival, the Jewish encounter with free, open, secular societies since their emergence in the early 19th century has been a mixed experience. The increased levels of toleration, of civil and political rights, and of access to all manner of economic and social opportunity have strengthened the Jewish political and economic presence, while weakening the demographics. It is ironic that when it finally arrived, the political and social model to which Jews have traditionally been committed could threaten the future of a thriving Diaspora.
But the Jewish demographic experiences in pre-World War II Europe, the United States, and other free countries pose the question of whether Judaism as we know it today can persist in societies where exclusion and discrimination are no longer legalized or legitimate. In these free Diaspora societies, Jews obviously will have to find inner resources to enjoy both the freedom and their Jewish commitment.
If they do not, it appears inevitable that Israel will become the exclusive Jewish center, linked to outposts in a truncated Diaspora populated principally by the devout. It is not an encouraging vision of the future. But perhaps, as Mr. Norden suggests in his conclusion, a smaller Jewish population may not necessarily mean the end of Diaspora Judaism.
Elihu Bergman
Washington, D.C.
_____________
Edward Norden writes:
David Fein is right—if more American Jews were Orthodox, they would definitely have more babies and there would be less intermarriage. By the same token, if more fish had wings, there would be more airborne fish. A mass return to the old-time religion is hardly worth mentioning except to say that it is nearly inconceivable.
A popular system of Jewish day schools and universities, such as the Roman Catholics have, and such as Ruth Janko would like to see, is not so inconceivable, yet the questions about it are as many as they are discouraging and obvious. Who would pay for it? And what would be the line of indoctrination? Orthodox? Ultra-Orthodox? Conservative? Reform? Zionist? Diaspora-affirming? Feminist?
On the other hand, Samuel H. Dresner understands that Orthodoxy is not the wave of the future and plumps instead for “a normative American Judaism which is both reverent toward tradition and relevant to pur lives today.” Presumably, such a Judaism, if we could only agree on what it consists of and put our minds and our checkbooks to it, would turn the intermarriage and birth-rate figures around.
For his part, Max Singer thinks that if only the Orthodox rabbis would shape up, the Jews of the Diaspora would be able not only to hold onto their own, but also to make innumerable converts.
All this is very well-meaning and dubious. The statistics, as I tried to show, are only the latest points along a rough curve starting with the emancipation in the thirteen American colonies and Europe a couple of centuries ago. The operative factors have been secular host societies in the Diaspora and the rise of a Jewish state, both of which are here to stay for a long time to come. Handwringing, finger-pointing, and the search for a magic bullet are therefore at best irrelevant activities.
I hope that, unlike some of the letter-writers, other readers of my article did not take it as some kind of call to arms or panic signal. I merely sought to report what is happening, to indicate what the future probably holds, and to suggest that maybe it isn’t a bad thing that soon Israel will be home for most of the Jews—that way lies normality, not only for Israelis, but for the Diaspora also. Yet while a shrunken Diaspora is inevitable, and not necessarily a problem, it would probably not be a good thing for that Diaspora—especially its American component—to be tiny. What made Elihu Bergman’s article in 1977 notorious was his projection, quoted by me, that by the year 2076 there would be “no more than 944,000 [Jews] and conceivably as few as 10,240 in America.” None of the freshest data indicates anything so drastic in the offing. Maybe by ignoring those numbers Mr. Bergman is now admitting that his computer went haywire.