For eight decades, COMMENTARY has covered the many challenges for Jews across America and the world—demographic, economic, security, religious, and spiritual. This tradition of internal analysis demonstrates one of the signature qualities of Jewish civilization—the determination to look inward to diagnose and solve problems before they become existential crises. In these pages, some of Judaism’s best and brightest—Emil Fackenheim, David Gelernter, Norman Podhoretz, Jack Wertheimer, Cynthia Ozick, Ruth Wisse, so many others—have brought clarity, if not necessarily resolution, to these challenges.

Into this arena once again steps Elliott Abrams, who wrote his first piece for COMMENTARY in 1972 and later became a distinguished foreign-policy hand both in the Senate and in multiple Republican administrations. But foreign policy is only one of his animating concerns. The fate of the Jewish people is another. Almost 30 years ago, in 1997’s Faith or Fear, he offered a limpid analysis of the looming dangers to the Jewish community in part due to its astonishing success in America. His new book, If You Will It: Rebuilding Jewish Peoplehood for the 21st Century, brings the story forward in authoritative and, at times, frightening ways.

One matter that has gotten appreciably worse since 1997 is anti-Semitism. In 2002, as White House aides, Abrams and I discussed the question in the West Wing along with Jay Lefkowitz, another longtime COMMENTARY contributor. Our conclusion was that anti-Semitism at the time was not enough of a worry to warrant special federal attention. That is no longer the case, as both the Biden administration and the new Trump administration have recognized.

The Biden administration’s recognition did not prove sufficient to resist the internal contradictions when it came to the Democratic Party’s ability to define and confront such egregious discrimination. Biden officials felt the constant need to link the problem to “Islamophobia,” which we know from actual hate-crime statistics collected at the federal, state, and local levels is infinitesimal compared with anti-Semitic crimes. Nevertheless, the very fact that the administration waded into this issue at all means that the problem has grown sufficiently to where it can’t be ignored.

Another significant change from 1997 has been the inception of interesting and innovative Jewish institutions that have come into being precisely to deal with the new ailments and outside provocations against us. Organizations such as Tikvah, which Abrams now chairs, and Birthright, which has sent more than 850,000 young Jews to Israel, are filling real needs and providing real insights into communal challenges. In his role at Tikvah, Abrams has researched and delved deeply into the continuity problems facing the Jewish community, and he has been able to assess and even fund some prospective solutions.

Abrams’s Tikvah-derived insights make up the first part of the book. He uses fresh data to lay out the problems facing the American Jewish community, including low birth rates, high intermarriage  rates, and the resultant demographic decline. Having diagnosed the current ailments, Abrams takes up actual solutions in the book’s second half. He offers three: Jewish schools, Jewish camps, and engagement with Israel.

When it comes to urging American Jews to send their kids to Jewish schools, it’s all too easy to say, in the manner of Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School throwing cash around the college bookstore, “Hey, folks, it’s on me! Shakespeare for everyone, OK?” But Abrams recognizes that making the Jewish day-school system work in an era of high inflation, onerous taxes to support government schools, and inconsistent demand by parents is an uphill battle. He does not just call for more attendance at Jewish schools; he seriously considers the economic challenges as well. He delves into curriculum strategies, “effective pricing models,” and the folly of “penetration pricing.” Offering a cheap first year of schooling to draw a parent in before lowering the boom when a taxpayer-funded public school is right nearby is a fool’s game.

As for camping, Abrams is not interested in nostalgia for what Woody Allen describes to Carol Kane in Annie Hall as “New York, Jewish…y’know…left-wing, liberal, intellectual…socialist summer camps and the father with the Ben Shahn drawing.” His focus is on how an immersive Jewish experience can help make children eager to retain their Jewishness as adults. Since, in his analysis, “camping works,” he sees philanthropic support for summer-camp attendance as a high leverage point for those who care about putting their money where their mouths are when it comes to promoting Jewish continuity.

In his third bucket, in which he discusses Birthright and other travel-to-Israel programs, Abrams has the advantage of dealing in an area in which we have gained a great deal of knowledge and wisdom over the past few decades. The program sends Jewish youth to Israel for 10 days to connect with the Jewish homeland. It has had some fits and starts, as Abrams recounts, but it is now a key part of Jewish communal life and essential to the continuity strategy.

As Abrams points out more than once, what he is advancing here is a strategy for continuity among the non-Orthodox. Orthodox Jews have their own approach, which also includes schools, camp, and Israel, but for the Orthodox, these are seen as necessities rather than as discretionary purchases. As Abrams notes, the elasticity of demand for Jewish schools is high for the non-Orthodox; among the Orthodox, it is nearly the equivalent of providing children food and shelter.

If You Will It is a useful compendium of strategies for how to maintain Jewish continuity for non-Orthodox Jews. In the Orthodox world, however, it is belief in G-d and adherence to the religious tradition that drive Jewish continuity and even growth. Over the long run, these convictions are not only more sustainable; they are also far less reliant on external strategies and philanthropic efforts. The Orthodox will pass on the traditions to their children at higher-than-average rates regardless of whether their kids go to camp or take a Birthright trip. This is as it has been for thousands of years, and this is likely how it will always be. In Deuteronomy 4:4, Moses offers the terrible example of the grievous ends that have met Hebrews who were moved to worship other gods “while you, who held fast to your God, are all alive today.” Holding fast has been, and likely always will be, the best path to Jewish continuity.

Photo: AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

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