To the Editor:
May I as someone who would still fall into your category of the younger generation by the hairsbreadth of one year comment on the April symposium, “Jewishness and the Younger Intellectuals”? I think it fair to say that the large majority of the participants report that while they do not disidentify or seek to hide their Jewishness, they find little in it of positive value. Since Judaism is a religion, and most of the contributors are not religious, they are not Jews in any technical sense. Since anti-Semitism has declined greatly, they do not feel the need to identify as against the persecuting out-group. And since as intellectuals of Jewish origin they feel that their ethnic-religious-cultural background has given them little that is unique, they see virtually no influence by Jewish culture on America. They also see little in the way of a special Jewish outlook on politics.
These attitudes shed some interesting and important light on the values of Jewish intellectuals. Yet there are various facts about the position of the Jew in America which must still be taken account of. In many ways, the American Jew—and for that matter the Jew in various other Western democratic countries—is still different from his Gentile fellows.
- In spite of continuing anti-Semitic sentiment among significant groups in the country (most high-status clubs still bar Jews; there are important areas of the economy in which it is difficult for Jews to secure high employment), the Jews are the wealthiest ethno-religious group in the nation. Their rate of upward social mobility far exceeds that of other groups.
- Elite colleges and professional schools which have been dropping the religious numerus clausus are aware that they may become predominantly Jewish institutions if they apply pure academic criteria in their admission policies. This is currently avoided by some of them through the maintenance of regional quotas. Jews still do inordinately well academically (holding all the conventional sociological categories constant).
- Any list of top-flight scientists as ranked by their professional colleagues will produce a high proportion of Jews.
- All the available evidence indicates that politically Jews remain disproportionately on the left. They vote from 75—85 per cent Democratic. Organizations like ADA contain a large proportion of Jews. Jewish money supports much of the civil rights activity in the country. To the extent that there are new or old, young or adult, radical movements remaining in America, these are again disproportionately Jewish in composition. The New York reform Democrats are heavily Jewish in their base, and so is New York’s Liberal party.
- Jews contribute a relatively larger proportion of their income to causes than do Gentiles. Much of this is to Jewish ones, like the UJA and Brandeis and Yeshiva Universities, but much also goes to general community institutions. John Gunther pointed out in Inside USA that a large part of community culture in the big cities of the United States is supported by heavy Jewish contributions. (In answer to your contributor who wondered what would disappear if the Jews disappeared, he might ask the fund raisers about symphonies, museums, universities, etc.)
- The Jews provide a large share of the audience for community culture as well. . . . The New York Times, for example, relies on a heavy Jewish readership in the New York area as its main mass base.
- As compared with non-Jews at the same income level, Jews are more likely to spend money in ways which make for an easier life, e.g. they will have more domestic service, they go on longer vacations, etc. They also read and buy more books.
- On a less significant level, studies of the drinking habits of Americans all show that Jews both have low levels of alcoholism, and drink a lot less in general than do non-Jews; there is some evidence, however, that they have a higher rate of narcotics addiction.
- As compared with non-Jews, Jews are much less likely to engage in religious activity, i.e., to attend services.
All these facts are irrelevant in one sense to the questions you asked your participants. Yet the participants themselves are a product of the Jewish milieu. And the very growth in numbers of Jewish intellectuals over the past two decades—as the barriers to attending the right schools and getting the right jobs have broken down—also testifies to the power of that vague something in the Jewish background which makes for achievement in the various fields of culture. . . . The aspirant Jewish intellectual sitting at the feet of a predominantly non-Jewish and, in fact, largely Christian culture in literature, painting, and music, finds that what he admires is mainly, even overwhelmingly, non-Jewish, and seeking to be at one with this larger culture, he comes to see his Jewishness as irrelevant, or as a handicap. Yet how many of us would be what we are or where we are if we came from non-Jewish families of similar socio-economic status?
I do not pretend to know how to define the quality or qualities in the Jewish background that produced your contributors. Whether they or their children marry Gentiles doesn’t concern me. I am concerned, however, that these qualities be preserved—much as I am concerned that the qualities in the New England Unitarian and Congregationalist background that were so productive of intellectual talent at various periods of our history also be preserved and extended.
Obviously a religion cannot be maintained in order to produce scientists, writers, or readers of the New York Times. But all the signs indicate that the Jews will hang on in the United States as a religious denomination and an ethnic group for some time to come. Creative elites all through history have taken great interest in their backgrounds, in what their families were and are. It behooves creative American Jews to show a little of the same interest in the tradition which has sustained them that some of the Gentile intellectuals have felt for theirs.
Seymour Martin Lipset
Department of Political Science
Yale University
New Haven, Conn.
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To the Editor:
There is a particular pathos in your symposium which disturbed me vastly more than the palpable ignorance of Judaism which it rather consistently displayed. The fact that Jews can be ignorant of Judaism would seem to reflect less upon the inner substance of Judaism than upon the possible mis-attribution of many of the contributors as either Jews or intellectuals. One doubts where they would write of the novel, politics, or anything else quite as personally, uncritically, or cavalierly. But this brings me to the particular pathos. It resembles what some contemporary philosophers have called the plight of historicity without transcendence—that is, mere being in the world, an accommodation to one’s unavoidably finite and circumscribed situation, a taking of the world for what it is and then making do.
Most of the contributions, other than those which were aggressively hostile or simply innocent, betray a vivid sense of the human situation. This sense was often defined personally (the individual in reaction to the parodies of his environment—Jewish and general) or historically (the individual in reaction to the desperateness of the times and the presumed incapacity of the Jewish vision to address the times). But with few exceptions most of the contributors who limn their existential predicament leave it at precisely that—a sheer predicament for which not only Judaism, but really nothing else, avails. One comes away from this symposium, as one did not come away from the symposium in The Contemporary Jewish Record more than a decade ago, feeling that practically nothing is left but dried-up loyalties, fatuous nostalgias, or a tough to-hell-with-the-business of straightening out the world when there’s a pretty girl to sleep with or a game at the Yankee Stadium. Despite Mr. Podhoretz’s feeling that considerable idealistic espousal remains, all the gods appear now to be dead—not only the true one, but the false ones as well. We seem to be left—if we are to judge by this symposium—with something which is less than either paganism or idolatry—an annoyance, an intrusion, animal dissatisfaction, and weariness. If the questions the editor of COMMENTARY asked were so trivial, parochial, or beside-the-point, why did so many of the contributors bother to answer? Perhaps they answered because they wished to announce their difficulty, the fact that they do live in a world in which they believe nothing exists which commands transcending obligation or, which is less, even upsets or bothers them.
One cannot be angry with the symposium because it is probably an accurate version of the younger Jewish intellectuals and for that reason full of justice. It does make it rather difficult, however, for an apocalyptic messianist like myself. I feel rather foolish taking so many eccentric things seriously—however, on second thought, possibly only the prescience of the end of time and history (and with it getting up in the morning, Henry James, copulation, and jazz) might prove alarming to this generation.
Arthur A. Cohen
New York City
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To the Editor:
. . . I think that you did an outstanding service to the community by publishing the symposium. I know that a number of rabbis in this community were rudely jolted by the participants’ answers—and rightly so. Our smug temple- and synagogue-goers and their leaders are so concerned and wrapped up in the frenetic drive toward bigger and better buildings that they have offered little that is attractive intellectually or spiritually to the young leaders and followers of our times. I agree that the organized religious structure has little to commend itself to this generation. Most Jewish activity can be reduced to the lowest common denominator of fund raising and more fund raising. The fire of prophetic Judaism, the emphasis on learning of rabbinic Judaism, have been smothered by the smooth “pretty boys” turned out by our seminaries. . . .
There are groups who are seriously concerned about the survival of our people, and although we may consider their ways and means strange and un-American, they are succeeding well in their small areas of endeavor. The Lubavitcher Hasidim (with whom I am not affiliated) and the various day school movements have produced graduates who are quite at home both in Judaistic and American values. . . . Almost all the products of this education have a positive feeling toward our tradition. The schools aim at producing learned laymen more than they aim to produce rabbis. A community based on learned businessmen, professionals, and working class has a better chance of survival than the temple crowd and country club set. . . .
Stanley Levin
Baltimore, Md.
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To the Editor:
Just one comment on the liberalism that radiates from the pages of your symposium.
If it had come out during the war that Hitler was making Negroes push Jews into the gas chambers, I could well imagine the first reaction of all the Ned Polskys of this world would be that Negroes were being discriminated against.
Incidentally, I suspect that a similar symposium conducted among scientific intellectuals, particularly those in the physical sciences (of which there were no representatives in your symposium), would yield a far more sympathetic attitude toward Judaism.
Bertram Kostant
Department of Mathematics
University of California
Berkeley, Calif.
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To the Editor:
. . . If it is true, as you say in your Introduction, that “the best Jewish traditions are no longer the unique possession of the Jewish people,” then how can one justify a symposium which discusses Jewishness solely in the context of persons who have experienced the religio-familism of Jewish life? Perhaps another symposium is called for, in which intellectuals are selected not on the basis solely of their religious background, but on the basis of their possession of “Jewish ideals.” But how to find them? They are not marked off by the experience of Jewishness in the family and kin group; hence there is no built-in criterion. Many of them reject, as does Philip Roth, the “myth of Jesus as Christ”; and perhaps this might be used. Among other possible criteria are the rejection of American middle-class life and its standards; passionate adherence to the ideals of brotherhood, universal justice, communalism; the respect for learning and the cultivation of the individual intellect.
All of these things, for which I stand, appear in the symposium as definitions of the Jewish ideal. Yet I am not “Jewish”. . . . My case is typical enough—most of my closest friends have been Jews; I have been an employee of academic departments of social science with a plurality or majority of Jews on their faculties; my most serious contemporary reading has often centered upon the works of the younger Jewish writers (who, incidentally, are preoccupied with the religio-familism of Jewish life); I subscribe to COMMENTARY. Yet in spite of all this identification and participation, I am not a “Jew” in the sense of the criterion by which the contributors to the symposium were selected. . . .
Are there perhaps two kinds of Jews: the familial Jews and the universal Jews? How do the familial-Jewish intellectuals regard their universal-Jewish colleagues? When and where are lines drawn? Should lines be drawn at all? Is the current tendency to revive Jewish rituals creating more identity problems than it solves? How can people become more Jewish religiously but less Jewish intellectually and socially at the same time? . . . The problem is severe enough for the Jew; it may come to be equally severe for the non-Jewish intellectuals who are “universal Jews,” and who identify strongly with their familial-Jewish colleagues, but who, because of the ritual revival and identity-hunger, may be shut out of their society.
John W. Bennett
Department of Sociology/Anthropology
Washington University
St. Louis, Missouri
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To the Editor:
I was fascinated by your symposium. . . . What struck me as of particular interest was the almost uniform lack of Jewish religious training each of these so-called intellectuals had received, as well as the very evident lack of a Jewish religious environment at home. . . . Having never taken the opportunity to study what they have rejected, how can they know the significance of what they now so boldly dismiss as being of little or no importance in their lives? . . .
Seymour S. Detsky
New York City
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To the Editor:
The symposium is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the attitudes of younger Jewish writers, teachers, scientists, etc. It was imaginatively planned and ably executed. . . . From the vantage point of one who has spent thirty-six years in association with intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals during their college experiences, I can vouch for its representative character. . . .
The Jewish community must reckon with the facts of the situation. These intellectuals, some poorly informed, some better grounded in Jewish lore and life, are concerned more with Jewish ethical values than with ritual and nationalism. The insights and courage of the prophet stir them more than the pleadings and scoldings of the Jewish survivalist or separatist. . . .
Understanding and patience are required if these creative spirits are not to be permanently alienated from Judaism. We must provide them during their adolescent years with a more effective and mature presentation of Jewish knowledge and attitudes. . . . This will be no parochial Judaism, but rather one in which its human and universal aspects will predominate.
Isidor B. Hoffman
Counselor to Jewish Students
Columbia University
New York City
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To the Editor:
After wading through the thirty-one contributions from the thirty-one “intellectuals” (and wading is a good description considering the shallowness involved), I can only say, “thank God.” Thank God, that Judaism and things Jewish are not in the hands and at the mercy of these apologists. And at last I have come to understand the meaning of “Jewish intellectual.” For me the term has taken on the nasty connotation of detachment and apartness—couched in long sentences. . . .
Having been hoary with age (thirty) when I received the Ph.D. (science), I cannot consider myself an intellectual; taking an active part in things Jewish, I cannot be a Jewish intellectual. . . . My comment, in a word, on this collection is “baloney”—kosher, of course.
(P.S. I heartily enjoy the magazine.)
Melvin A. Benarde
Chestertown, Maryland
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To the Editor:
One would suppose that by directing the questions of your April symposium to the younger Jewish intellectuals of America, the intention was to solicit a subjective response to these questions. . . . Otherwise, the questions, slightly reworded, could have—and perhaps should have—been directed to young Gentile intellectuals. With the exception of a handful of contributors, . . . most of the articles read like miniature sociological treatises. . . . I suspect a kind of collective conspiracy—probably unconscious—designed to avoid a personal confrontation. . . . What a deplorable waste of intellect and imagination is here involved, [and what a loss] of the marvelous potential of the whole idea. . . .
David B. Goldman
Brooklyn, N.Y.
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To the Editor:
On reading your symposium one is impressed by (1) the shallowness and vagueness of the questions; and (2) the utter lack of Jewish knowledge displayed by most of the respondents. . . . If you don’t tell us what “Jewishness” is, how can you ask questions about it? Also, how can one seriously consider answers about “Jewishness” from individuals who have, for the most part, only ignorance of Judaism or the Jewish past on which to base their conclusions?
(Chaplain) Martin Siegel
Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy
National Jewish Welfare Board
New York City
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To the Editor:
The younger intellectuals were really very distressing. Not so much because they were so uninvolved in Jewish life, but because of their terribly bored, oh so intellectual, emotionally empty reaction to COMMENTARY’S questions. I am afraid that their well-formed sentences and clique literary references did not hide the fact that they misunderstood much of what constitutes Jewish religion, and that many probably suffer from a touch of an old Jewish disease whose symptom is a sharp reduction in one’s self-esteem.
Allen I. Rutchik
New York City
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To the Editor:
Intellectual, intellectual quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With Zen, hip, and beat
Your writings are quite a treat.
Your search for the latest fad
Does not make me mad.
For your arrangement
Of words and phrases is often clever.
But you’ll remain
A thing of beauty and a goy forever.
(Rabbi) Bernard S. Raskas
Temple of Aaron
St. Paul, Minnesota
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To the Editor:
. . . I was surprised to find that some of your symposiasts answered the fifth question by admitting that they would not be concerned if their children apostatized. . . . I’ve been wondering if I missed the train somewhere, since it was difficult for me to realize that parents could be lacking, in a traditional sense, what I might call contemporary ancestorship; parents, though they are people, also have a special concern for their offspring and that concern usually expresses itself in some accordance with their traditional inheritance. . . . Wondering how I would have answered the questions if I were asked, it was brought home to me that my background is probably unique as a Jewess in many ways; I never lived in a ghetto (though I’m over seventy); I was brought up in Dublin [see “The Old Days in Dublin,” by the writer in COMMENTARY, July 1952—ED.] and also spent some time in London prior to my marriage. But after I married, my life, led on the Alaskan frontier, was far removed from Jewish contacts. Yet because of the traditional background in my formative years I often fell back on my Jewishness while on the frontier, and it helped in my pioneering. . . .
Well, keep on printing articles like the symposium. They will keep my blood stirred, and I’m sure I’ll find it good for the digestion.
Jessie S. Bloom
Seattle, Washington
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To the Editor:
Your symposium deserves the highest praise for both its approach and the insight provided into the thinking of a group—nominally Jewish—who seem to be woefully devoid of positive feeling toward Jewish tradition or teaching.
Many of those who replied to your questions seem to stem from that segment of the Jewish community which—nurtured by much of the latter-day Jewish press—believed that the specific problems of the Jew would disappear in an egalitarian society. They ignore the golden chain of Jewish history which stretches over millenia. . . .
If the contributors to your symposium are possibly searching for a change in the values of society, why do they overlook the dynamic revolution taking place in Israel today? Although it is being accomplished with outside financial aid, this revolution is producing a new kind of Jew—one who is no longer chaff for the winds of fate, relegated to the class of middle-man or professional only, but one who builds on all levels, who tills the soil, constructs roads, and contributes to all strata of society. . . .
Hyman Epstein
Passaic, N.J.
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To the Editor:
. . . . [Reading your symposium] I was reminded of the old Yiddish joke about the Jew who was elbowed off a Warsaw sidewalk by a drunken Pole: “Move, Jew!” To which our hero retorts, “I am no Jew. I am a product of Western civilization. Racially, I am a Sumerian-Babylonian-Egyptian—etc., etc.” When he has done with his delineation, he explodes in mid-air and vanishes off the face of the earth.
Clara Wishener
Helmuth, N.Y.
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