JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

08/15/08 11:19 AM

This sounds like a job for Israel Man and Diaspora Boy!

08/15/08 12:48 PM

it’s not an analysis, it’s an impression, so you can’t criticize or disagree. that’s how she feels. yeah it’s selective, so is every factual account. what i don’t like about her opinions are two things—her implicit dislike for the haredi advances here and her neglect to mention the hundreds of thousands of israelis who have left israel for the goldene medina of the usa. you really cannot blame her for her self-serving superiority assertions. and she is quite clear that she felt no reason to come to the US for 26 years - so she didn’t miss it—she didn’t like it enough to visit. so all told for a biased musing on the US it is not that awful.

08/15/08 01:14 PM

I agree with her that there’s a decline, but it’s not irreversible. The reason for the decline is that most U.S. Jews identify themselves as liberals first and Jews at most second and since they value equality above all, they don’t want to stand out by having different customs. They express their “Jewishness” by supporting liberal, even anti-Semitic causes, not by going to synagogues or otherwise being involved with Jews. Meanwhile, the Orthodox are focused on rituals and obligations and do not try to motivate young Jews to care, and Jews in general are too focused on the past of Jewish suffering and death; this turns off younger people.

How to reverse the decline at the macro level, I don’t know.

08/15/08 01:39 PM

What does Ms. Seigel-Itzkovich really know about American Jewry?  Seven days holed up with relatives and at a Hadassah conference provides a hint as to how much weight to attach to her arrogant and hastily drawn conclusions.  I am thrilled she is happy in Israel and identifies as strongly as she does.  And I have news for her: most American Jews—indeed most Jews outside of Israel—will not make aliyah.  I am not saying that’s good or bad.  it just is.  Moreover, perhaps she is not in touch with trends among Israelis—who appear to be seeking more meaning (as are many American Jews) to their identity other than relying solely their choice of residence.

It’s good to have frank and candid dialogue and exchanges.  We have a lot to learn from each other.  I’m pretty sure it’s not too good—and inconsistent with Torah teaching—to put on airs, to judge, and to embody an attitude of superiority.  That’s hardly the stuff of leadership and inspiration.

Often we have a choice between being self-righteously right and humbly influential.  Ms. Seigel-Itzkovich is not only neither right nor influential, she is wrong in the least helpful way.

08/15/08 02:05 PM

Brilliant line: “As a Zionist and modern Orthodox Jew who believes every Jew should live in Israel, I nevertheless went to the US with an objective, open mind.”

HA!  Good one.  (She says “Afro-Americans”!  Doesn’t JPost have editors?!)

The line you quote from her sums up the piece’s stupidity: “If Hadassah is struggling, what about the future of smaller and much less influential Jewish organizations?” If this was 60 years ago, she’d be worrying about the demise of the bund.  Oh no, if the Jewish labor movement is faltering, can American Judaism as a whole be far behind?!  There are plenty of Jewish movements that are thriving in America today that didn’t even exist 25 years ago, including Jewish Renewal and Secular Humanism.  Why is AJWS booming if “intermarriage and assimilation” are destroying American Jewry?

Hadassah spent their conference lamenting changes in society so that they can claim their decline is not their own fault.  But guess what? Maybe their membership is declining because their mission doesn’t speak to young women anymore.  We’re getting a whole cottage industry about the “feminization” of Jewish institutional life; if Hadassah fails to benefit from that trend, is it really a sign of the apocolypse for American Jewry?

And any Israeli who honestly believes all Jews should live in Israel isn’t thinking very strategically on behalf of their own country or people.  Does it really hurt to have disproportionate Jewish representation in the government and top industries, universities and professions in the world’s richest superpower?  Do we really want the entire Jewish population within the blast radius of a single nuclear bomb? (Sorry to be so grim, but if a disaster of biblical proportions is going to happen to any people, guess who...)

Here’s my Diaspora-superiority rant: As bad as U.S. politicians are, the Israeli government operates like a corrupt third-world country.  Israel is a world leader in human trafficking.  The occupation has undercut the morality of Israel’s founding principles. The ultra-Orthodox hold the entire country hostage but secular Israelis are so removed from their religion—despite living on “The Land”—that they don’t get off their butts to do anything about it. And the necessary militarization of the entire population has made the society so rude and pushy that Israeli men make Italian men look downright gentlemanly. (Yeah, yeah, I know, Sabra blah-bra, prickly on the outside—are they really so sweet on the inside?)

All the innovation in Jewish religious life is happening in the U.S.  Almost all the global cultural contributions made by Jews is still eminating from America. Israel is a wonderful country, despite all my complaints, but I can be a damn fine Jew right here in Jew York City, thank you very much.

08/15/08 02:11 PM

Despite the author’s claim that American Jewry is in much more dire straits than it was 30 years ago, the conspicuous excess of Beverly Hills Jews and the desire of Hadassah delegates to eat non-kosher food than kosher was as true 30 years ago when she left the US as it is now. As for her question “If Hadassah is struggling, what about the future of smaller and much less influential Jewish organizations?” she answers it herself elsewhere in the article when she notes that as “most younger Jewish women hold full-time jobs, it’s more difficult for Hadassah to attract them as active members than the enthusiastic, ardent housewives of the older generation.”

Regarding her “statistics,” she cites a survey of delegates that “only 15% said US Jews in their 20s and 30s are as attached to Israel and Judaism as those in their 50s and 60s.” However, she also noted that most delegates are middle-aged or older—I would have been more impressed if she’d cited a study of US Jews with respondents who were actually in their 20s and 30s.

08/15/08 04:41 PM

I agree with Judy on Jews here in the US. However, to see that materialistic non caring atttitude she does not have to go to the country of her birth, but to her adopted home, Israel. Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s Israel was looked upon as people who toiled the land and its sabra population was much to be admired. Today Israel is a carbon copy of the US as it lost its values and the struggle to make it egilitarian as it did in the beginning, albeit even the secular Jews are more religious than many American Jews.

08/15/08 05:37 PM

@Doug from PA

What a load of right-wing ethnonationalist bullcrap.

Try reading any of the studies Steven M. Cohen and Ari Kelman have produced in the last decade, particularly on what they call “the myth of the unaffiliated Jew.” Most young Jews in America are actively engaged Jewishly, however they affiliate in non-traditional and non-institutional ways because they feel alienated from traditional forms of Jewish engagement and are bored to tears with slow-moving and unchanging bureaucratic institutions.

The primary reasons young Jews are alienated are that they’re sick of being condescended to by know-it-alls and holier-than-thou types, they don’t buy into Israel-right-or-wrong (because it’s not consistent with the Jewish values and ethics that do resonate with them), and they’re sick of being told that if they don’t marry and have Jewish babies that we’re going to go extinct.  They’re also disgusted by Jewish institutional politics and want nothing to do with them.

Even so, there are more young people enrolling in Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Modern Orthodox and Haredi yeshivot and rabbinical schools than ever in American history.  The Reform movement is exploding with new congregants.  The baal teshuvah movement has grown so big it’s encountering a backlash.  There’s been a huge renaissance in Jewish culture, including a slew of new organizations and initiatives from social justice projects to magazines and record labels.  And there are new independent minyanim and havurot cropping up all over the country every week.

To say that American Judaism is dying is to deny reality.  We’re witnessing a boom like we’ve never seen before.

Unfortunately, Zionist idiots like the author of this op-ed are too busy trash talking liberals and trying to scare people into joining the Jewish National Project to acknowledge it.

08/15/08 05:39 PM

I am a college educated 65 year old Jewish woman of low income living in the Bronx, New York near a rejuvenating Bronx park. Does this woman have any sense of reality or what?Her snobbery and ignorance are palpable!!! How dare she insult a whole nation of people who are of the same religion. I am a Jew.  The security of Israel is utmost in my thoughts.  I am not materialistic and don’t subscribe to the “American Dream” fantasy.  There are many caring decent Jews here with meaningful values. This author needs to shine a light on herself.

08/15/08 05:49 PM

Also, did it ever occur to anyone that the reason major Jewish organizations keep releasing statistics warning of the disappearance of American Jewry is because they’re trying to scare you into donating money to their causes?

Nevermind that, as the stewards of American Jewish life, they’ve been steering the ship for the last century and running it into the ground. 

If anyone should be blamed for the purported disappearance of American Jews, it should be those organizations that send all their money to the Sachnut, or those individuals who donate to Aish HaTorah and the Likud Party, instead of investing in American Jewish education.  If day school education in this country were affordable and every Jewish parent could send their children to a good Jewish day school (and perhaps if the Zionists hadn’t murdered Yiddish and it continued to thrive as a language in America) we’d have as vibrant, rich and diverse a Jewish community as we had in pre-war Europe.  Thankfully we’re getting there on our own, no thanks to the naysayers and the Jewish militants.