We all know the level of non-connection with our fellow American Jewish brethren, this is a very interesting article that must be read and understood. If this phenomena of loss of Jewish Identity is not understood and properly remedied in the Persian Jewish community, we will most likley follow their dismal fate where a scenerio of eating pork on kippur will not be unheared of.

An in depth analysis of generational trends and demographic statistics could lead an Israeli to believe that American Jewish communities will disappear and the only place to remain Jewish would be in Israel. The philosopher Natan Rotenstreich once noted “A Jew is a Jew when he is with other Jews.” The evolution of the Jewish community in America has gradually led to less and less Jews being Jewish together and could eventually lead to its extinction. With every succeeding generation the underlying trend found within the Jewish community is that children are less involved with religion than their parents. Hence, an Israeli who picks up a copy of Look magazine in 1964 or the Jerusalem Report in 1992 and reads about “the vanishing American Jew,” would be justified in concluding that American Jewry will eventually disappear based on the falling apart of a community that practices Judaism together.

In contrast to previous Jewish communities in the Diaspora, American Jews have had more freedom to practice their faith. During the early twentieth century, both religious and secular Zionists propelled the need for a Jewish homeland to avoid any further persecution. The more observant Eastern Europeans felt it was the people’s obligation to bring about redemption through the creation of a Jewish state. Soviet oppression in the form of pogroms forced these Jews to depend on the coming of the Messiah as their only hope. In Western Europe, a series of anti-Semitic events ignited the charge for Jewish statehood within a more predominantly secular Jewish community. Both religious and secular Jews partook in the endeavor to establish the Jewish state as a place where Jews could live in peace. American Jewry in the second half of the 20th Century has faced neither of these problems of incapacity to practice Judaism or widespread anti-Semitism and, as such has been less active. Rather, Jews in America are faced with something totally contrary to oppression with freedom and rapid acculturation. Without constant subjugation and anti-Semitism, many American Jews have had no problem assimilating and forgetting that they are Jewish.

An understanding of generational differences will help establish how each succeeding generation became further detached from the core of religious life. The first and most important wave of Jewish immigration to the states occurred between 1880 and 1920. During this span of forty years, the majority of the current Jewish population’s first generation arrived to the States. These poor migrants mostly settled in the ghettos of metropolitan cities where they afforded the opportunity to build relatively active communities by living in close proximity to other Jews. Having previously lived in foreign countries, these Jews had a strong sense of being ‘different’ instilled within them because of the oppression they endured by their native countries. Trying to disprove that they could still be Jews while not being ‘different,’ they worked hard to prove they could be full-fledged Americans.

The second generation of Jews in America was different from their parents in that they were less exposed to anti-Semitism as American born citizens. They believed in and strove for the American dream by applying a full effort to the meritocratic system. In order to escape the second class citizen stigmatism attached to immigrants, they hoped to attain “prestige, respect, authority, and status” by excelling in their academic achievements. These aspirations culminated when this second generation began to marry and move out of the urban centers to the suburbs. The sheltered communities offered by suburbia allowed for the first major blow to Jewish communities as Jews were no longer in physical proximity to one another. Applying Rotenstreich’s notion, since these Jews were not associating with each other as much, they were behaving less Jewish.

A second generation Jewish family in the suburbs was pulling away from the tradition as it was focused more on the individual than the community. The prospects of education became even more important and the major focus of the family unit became to raise the sons and daughters in the best possible schools. Furthermore, as they became more focused on vocational goals, their energies were diverted away more and more from Jewish activities. Judaism began to resemble a cultural activity to be done with grandma and grandpa rather than a meaningful religious experience. The most obvious effect of the increased education and change in lifestyle is apparent in the demographic studies conducted by Alvin Chemkin to show the birthrate of “the Jewish population is not keeping pace with the generational population” and that in “each of the younger groups, the Jewish population is smaller than in the older age groups.” According to Samuel C. Heilman, not realizing the ultimate consequences of overemphasizing the individual for these Jews of the fifties was to be living in a “fool’s paradise.”

Every additional freedom found in the States instead of the oppression found in a foreign land, allowed Jews to be fully integrated into American society. However, the problem now was “a society that sought not to spit them out, but rather one that ate them up.” They only had to pay the small price of their Judaism in order to be accepted as equals in American society. For example, the decrease of Jewish families as compared to increased access to the university system shows that Judaism was exchanged for integration. Intermarriage rose from 6 percent before the sixties, to 16 percent by the end of the decade. This was concurrent with a drop from 60 percent of Americans wanting to limit the amount of Jews to universities in 1946 to four percent in 1962 The extreme willingness of Jews in the 1960’s to accept everything American can be exemplified by the 1960 Film Exodus. In this movie, an American woman is seen as having a love affair with one of the leaders of the Zionist movement. To the second generation American Jews who created the film, such as writer Leon Uris, the idea of intermarriage seemed to be perfectly fine as they portray Ari Ben Canaan pursuing the non-Jewish American girl, Kitty Fremont. As a lead into a romantic kiss, Kitty explained that Jew and American were not different, but rather similar. In the following scenes, Kitty struggles with the feeling that she may be too different for a relationship with a Jew. Nonetheless, by the end of the film, she and Canaan are kissing once again. The creators would have loved to believe that this was the case where Jews could have had a loving relationship with Americans and neither would be more ‘different’ than the other.

As early as the seventies, a small minority (less than 10 percent) of active Jews took heed of the increasingly weak Jewish communities, and worked hard to prevent the eventual collapse of everything Jewish. These activists were in a large part woken up by events such as the trial of Adolf Eichman and the unexpected triumphant victory of the 1967 war, which united international Jewish brotherhood. Orthodoxy, as compared to any other denomination more fully embodied this movement as these Jews refused to sacrifice their Jewish character for acceptance in American culture. Those who only defined themselves culturally as Jews and whose numbers reflected that of a dying nation can be categorized as “Heritage Jews.” The two extremes of Judaism represented the polarization of a people with the great majority leaning towards the more liberal side of Reformed Judaism. The “paradox” as defined by Heilman was that those contributing to the disappearance of Judaism most didn’t see the decline as a problem. However, those who were working feverously to combat the diminishing of their faith were the only ones who could fully understand the problem.

The gap between active Jews and “Heritage Jews” widened as more and more people saw their Judaism as only a cultural pastime. Many people who considered themselves in between the two opposites were defined as Conservative. Yet, this denomination has proven to be not much more than a channel between Orthodoxy and Reform as the lines between Conservatism and Reformed Jewry are blurred over the decades and only the active Conservatives are inclined towards the right. When addressing the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly Convention in 1959, Mordecai Kaplan was speaking specifically to this group in the shrinking middle in an attempt to keep them from merging with the left. He delineated a set of “religious imperatives” upon which he implores “the rehabilitation of Israel as the spiritual homeland of the Jewish people, organic or more tightly bonded Jewish communities, better knowledge of Hebrew, and a revitalization of Jewish Sabbath and festival observance.” His suggestions can all be correlated to a life in Israel as he focuses on the Holy land, the importance of a strong Jewish community, Hebrew, and the Sabbath. The fact that he moved to Israel at the end of his life gives further proof for our hypothetical Israeli to make his point that Judaism could only be saved in Israel.

The factors and implications of education and contributions to Jewish charities have further demonstrated the rift between active and heritage Jews to show that the minority group is to survive while the majority is slowly diminishing. Although it may seem obvious that extensive Jewish education is correlated to inmarriage and activity, the unfortunate reality is that enrollment “at the day school or yeshiva remained limited to a minority,” dominated by the Orthodox. Ever since biblical times, the collection of funds was part of being counted as part of the community. By comparing the rate of contributions by the different denominations within American Jewry for parochial needs, an assessment of community involvement may be made. According to the statistical research of the 60’s and 70’s provided by Steven Cohen, active Jews have been shown to contribute more. In fact, a strong correlation has been shown between events that raise Jewish awareness, such as Israeli Wars, to increased contributions made to the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds (CJFWF). However, the active Jews are a minority and without the wars to remind the masses of a Jewish obligation, the amount has been strikingly low. For the few who continue to contribute and be educated, the burden has become increasingly difficult to bear.

With the unfortunate reality of Jews continuously having lost strength in numbers through intermarriage and the degradation of traditions, a shrinking group of the more active Jews faced the challenge of leading the entire community. In 1990, the rate of intermarriage was as high as 32 percent and a quarter of those asked in 1989 didn’t care if their children married a Jew. Their access to human and economic resources will eventually be insufficient and unable to keep up with the demanding life style.

An Israeli who read the Jerusalem Report article entitled “The Vanishing American Jew” and considered all of the aforementioned statistics could have easily concluded that American Jewish life is slowly disappearing. With his knowledge of Israeli society, as secular as it may be, he could also easily conclude that active Jews, which are mostly the Orthodox Jews, will find it easier to survive if they move to Israel. He would know that even secular Jews in Israel pay taxes which support religious institutions. Not to mention the obvious of a Hebrew speaking nation where every Jewish holiday is a national holiday and that there is kosher food available almost everywhere. In being the only place in the world where Jews are unavoidably together, Israel would seem like the only remaining solution to the growing assimilation of the vanishing American Jew. This leaves the heritage Jews alone in America to fade away.

Books Cited:

• Cohn-Sherbok, Dan, and Dawoud El-Alimi. The Palestine-Israeli Conflict. Oxford: One World, 2003.

• Samuel C. Heilman. Portrait of American Jews. Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 1995.

Movies Cited:

• Exodus. Dir. Otto Preminger. Perf. Paul Newman. Videocassette. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1960.