JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

08/16/08 04:15 PM

Well, her piece was certainly condescending and mean spirited.  While not altogether wrong about the US or its Jewish Community, the filter through which this is viewed is quite warped. 

There’s no doubt that, as a whole, the American Jewish community is in a decline of sorts.  While its lamentable in pure numerical terms, it’s probably invitable but not altogether undesirable.  As I once read elsewhere, this trend will probably result in a “smaller, but better, Jewish community.” When a Jewish community of a stable 6 million people is scattering itself over a nation the size of the US, a country that has the same number of people as in the Jewish community immigrating here here every few years, a change in community composition and influence is inevitable.

WHAT THE AUTHOR GETS RIGHT:
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- Materialism: No doubt a problem in all communities, and not just in the Jewish world.  Our current economic difficulties have me cautiously optimistic that this might have reached its height (Americans are maxed out on credit), but we’ll see… I’m also sensing a small materialism backlash beginning…

- Suburbanization: While few Americans realize it, the US’s wholesale conversion to a suburban nation over the last 60-70 years is probably one of its biggest long term strategic, economic, and social mistakes, maybe a critical one that may cost the US superpower status and take the better part of the next 60-100 years to reverse.  I don’t blame those who decided to suburbanize America.  It must have made overwhelming sense after WWII and the baby boom.  The land was there, it was cheap, and it was assumed that gas would be never ended and almost free.  America’s urban culture was new (only about 40-60 years old) vs that of Europe, which was hundreds-thousands of years old, and thus easily discardable.  Racial tensions that later broke out in cities lead to further “White Flight.” Suburbanization itself was the “American Dream” (the apple pie, white picket, fence, etc) and one of the things that separated us from the “Godless Communists.” One could even argue that suburbanization is what powered America to its superpower status economically in the post-WWII era.  All true, but in an age of dwindling gas supplies and decreased civic ties and a lack of Americans’ interpersonal contact with one another, it’s time to rebuild our urbanity and reverse the way we live.

- Cost of Jewish Living: Absolutely correct.  Much has been written on this and its true.  To live a fully observant lifestyle with kashrut, camps, congregations, and day school, it’s crushing.  The people I know who pull it off best are upper-middle class at least.  I don’t know how one can be merely middle-class and do it for more than two kids. 

- Education: Also correct.  There are Jewish communities much smaller than the US’s around the world who have maintained their identities and numbers over the generations.  Those communities are generally ones where 90+% of kids are in Jewish schools.  Now, granted, some of these communities are ones in which the dominant culture do not have universal public schools (a US innovation which powered our rise that the author disparages) or “mainstream” school options themselves Christian or Muslim parochial or are ones in which each community maintains its own schools.  The lack of cheap, plentiful, affordable Jewish schooling in our community, though, is a disgrace. 

- Jewish decline: Again, as a whole, yes.  However, the Jewish community is going in three directions.  Two communities are actually growing and flourishing… One is the orthodox community and “traditional” Judaism, the other is an engaged and increasingly observant Reform community.  The “middle” communities, be they Conservative or ethnic Jews, are rapidly vanishing.  This middle used to be the biggest part of the American community, and they are declining.  Conservative Judaism because of both the successes of Reform Judaism and Orthodox Judaism, both of which are attracting away its members (a newly conservative Reform Judaism taking away the less-observant, Orthodox taking away the more serious).  Ethnic Judaism because there is no “substance” to perpetuate it from generation to generation (and no substance to prevent intermarriage), and because America’s melting pot culture steamrolls almost every immigrant culture (except, perhaps, Hispanic due to the absolutely huge numbers involved).  This split, however, leads to…

WHAT THE AUTHOR GETS WRONG:
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Essentially, everything else…

- Vitality: Both on the Reform/Reconstructionist end of the spectrum and on the Orthodox end, American Jewish culture and faith may be more vital, creative, and engaging than at any other time in recent world history.  Every representative from those communities will tell you that.  The orthodox community, both due to birthrates and increased adherents from the non-orthodox world, is exploding and it’s common to see articles about how housing can’t be built fast enough for orthodox communities in NY. In part because of this, orthodox communities are growing up in lots of other cities that are flourishing as well (Bridgeport, CT and Providence, RI come to mind).  The Reform movement was smart to have tons of new synagogues in America’s fasting growing cities and its increasingly observant (the big Reform message of the year is increased Shabbat observe!) yet inclusive culture is growing them like crazy.  Only Conservative Judaism seems unsure of where to go and is in a rut…

- Hadassah: The less said about her “As Hadassah goes so does American Judaism” the better.  I know a fleet of observant, Jewishly engaged women, and not a one likely even ever thought about Hadassah.  That group has been groping and searching for revelence for generations, and their search obviously continues…

- Intermarriage: Yup, its high, no doubt, and has been so since the boomers (and now their children).  But the sense I get (I’m in my mid-30’s) from my peers and others is that it’s probably leveled out and is as bad as it will get.  Via J-Date (in my peer group over 50% of Jewish marriages started here) and other internet options, if you want to date Jewish and marry Jewish, you can.  I can’t even imagine how non-kippot and hamesh wearing young Jewish professionals found each other before J-date… Today, every Jew is a “Jew by Choice.” If you want to marry Jewish and date Jewish, you can.  If you don’t want to, you don’t have to… This is why education is so critical…

- Education: While expensive as noted above, I thought I had read that the number of children enrolled in Jewish schools is at an all time high.  Not as high as it should be, to be sure, but still at record levels.  While some Conservative Schechter schools are closing, this is more due to the weakness of that movement (and of some communtiies, like Worcester, MA) than anything else…

Ok, that’s all I have time to type....

While I expect the community to shrink within my lifetime (to, perhaps, 3.5-4 million Jews), I predict the American Jewish community of the mid 21st century to be more observant, more engaged, more educated, and more Jewish than any other Jewish community in American history.

- Iari

PS: I don’t like this Israel vs the US community attitude the author has.  If she lived the Judaism she claims to, she’d have a bit more of a Kol Yisrael attitude…

08/17/08 07:50 AM

Siegel-Itzkovich doesn’t see it, therefore it doesn’t exist: Young women are not joining Hadassah, therefore they are not joining anything. And so on. Ridiculous.

All Jews should live in israel? Let her tell the Jews who are leaving it. And let her find enough water to support all of us if/when we move there.

08/18/08 02:17 PM

“If Hadassah is struggling, what about the future of smaller and much less influential Jewish organizations?”

This is a little like saying “if the giant British Empire fell apart, what about the future of all its poor colonies”?

I’d suggest she read a copy of “Slingshot,” the Bronfman foundation’s “Resource Guide to American Jewish Innovation” for a list of small and resourceful organizations that have blossomed in the past decade or so.

08/19/08 05:13 PM

Let’s see—I come from an American family that pretty much ignored its Jewish roots.  But I am currently an active leader in a Jewish renewal community, where I regularly leyn on Shabbat and most holidays (something I learned as an adult from others in the group), and help to lead and organize services.  I light Shabbat candles every Friday night, build a Sukkah every year, hold a Seder, eat vegetarian (although not formally kosher) and the cycle of Jewish holidays has become my life.  There is the problem of that non-Jewish life partner, but he actively and willingly participates and is a strong supporter of all my Jewish practices (unlike my Jewish ex-husband who did his best to sabotage every Jewish thing I tried to do.) I would never even consider joining Hadassah, but it is a fine organization for those who are into that sort of thing.  So, am I lost or found?  Am I shrinkage or growth? Am I part of the problem or part of the solution?  It is so easy to oversimplify the story, but I think the issues are much more complicated than Siegel-Itzkovich seems willing to tackle.

08/20/08 06:42 AM

With one or two exceptions, I learned far more from these responses than I did from Judy’s rather facetious and superficial piece!

Is this the shape of the journalism and analysis of the future?  A collaborative (perhaps moderated) article-cum-discussion?

08/20/08 02:33 PM

Not surprisingly all the commentators are radical Reform or Progressive Jews.  Most of them are intermarried and their grandchildren will not be Jewish.
The reason they attack Judy is because they know deep down they are part of the problems that exist in the American Jewish community.  Judy holds up a mirror to these people and they don’t like what they see so they blame the messenger.
The ignorant comments here show that the decline in the Jewish community, especially in the secular world, is worse than this article describes.  Only the strong survive and the that will be the Orthdox.  That’s the good news.

08/20/08 03:04 PM

“Only the strong survive and the that will be the Orthdox.”

You raise an army of unemployed freeloaders and you call it survival?  15 kids and no day job, no secular education, no chance to support yourself?  Chuckle.  Where oh where will you go when there are no more rich chilonim to bankroll your kollels? 

Also, one word for you chief:  Haskalah.

It’s what happens when you keep your kids in the shtetl and browbeat them with anti-intellectualism for too long.

For every new child you bring into the world, another becomes frei.

08/20/08 03:49 PM

All I can say is, don’t bite off the hand that feeds you, lady. Those very same affluent American Jews are the ones Israel depends on to pay for her hospitals, food banks, ambulances, orphanages, and schools...not to mention, of course, El-Al tickets to Israel, Israeli hotel rooms, and Israeli tours.

Let’s hope that the author is terribly wrong when she says there’s no future for American Jewry--because Israel will suffer most if such a prediction is true.