COLUMN: Ensuring survival for Judaism

From Michael Pereira's, "Vox," Fall '98 From Michael Pereira's, "Vox," Fall '98What does it mean to be Jewish?" is not the same question as "What did it mean to be Jewish?" or "What will it mean to be Jewish in the next century?" Judaism is "learning, learning, learning," asking questions whose answers change over time and even at the same time. Two Jews, after all, will produce three opinions on any subject. Being Jewish, like being American, is usually part of a hyphenated identity. Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Havurah and postdenominational Jews are all Jews. Extent of religion in no way reflects a moral hierarchy. Indeed, all levels of faith deserve the same access to identity, and all share a stake in the preservation of Judaism, for different and similar reasons. Yet the most serious challenges to the continuation of Judaism now come from within, as graphically illustrated by the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jew. Denominational nit-picking by ultra-Orthodox literalists, and assimilation, intermarriage and low-birth rates among secular Jews of our generation, all threaten the existence of Judaism in the next century. A liberal definition of the religion is crucial to its survival. Perversely, the most successful ecumenical influence on Judaism through the ages has been anti-Semitism. Jews have defined themselves in opposition to adversity, through 3,500 years of resilience and resourcefulness. As Albert Einstein observed, "It may be thanks to anti-Semitism that we are able to preserve our existence as a race?." Or as Sartre claimed, typically sententious, "It is the anti-Semite who makes the Jew." Alan Dershowitz, in his new book The Vanishing American Jew, calls this the "Tsuris Theory of Jewish Survival" -- that pain and struggle are the necessary glue of identity. Trials reinforce the faith, they bring distant sects together under a common banner. But Dershowitz also warns that the past cannot be a template for the future. History, he says, "gets a vote, but not a veto." Judaism has survived by adapting the past to the present, by facing the exigencies of the day with traditional wisdom. The Tsuris Theory, therefore, might have outlived its utility. Today, institutional anti-Semitism (as opposed to personal anti-Semitism, the less dangerous form) is waning in America. No longer are Jews barred from the best educational and work opportunities. Though Jews make up just over 2 percent of the American population, 25 percent of America's richest people are of Jewish backgrounds. Jews attend Ivy League colleges at 10 times their presence in the general population and 40 percent of America's Nobel Prize winners in Science and Economics have been Jews. The Catholic Church has approved diplomatic relations with Israel and Bill Clinton became the first American president to attend a Rosh Hashanah service, davening with Dershowitz over a shared mahzor. A 1988 Dartmouth survey sums it up nicely: "Not a single Jewish student thought that being Jewish made any difference in his or her future opportunities in America." Jews are no longer second-class citizens, guests in a host country. American Jews today enjoy legitimacy and prestige where just a generation ago there was institutionalized anti-Semitism. Paranoia, therefore, is a dated, restrictive reaction. But celebration would also be premature. Threats to Jewish survival in America persist, despite the successes of individual Jews. (What's best for the individual, after all, does not always benefit the collective.) Birth and intermarriage rates are widely divergent within Judaism, a fracture that could become a yawning rift with time. A chart published in the October 1996 issue of Moment magazine suggests that by the fourth generation (around the middle of the next century), 200 secular Jews will have produced ten Jewish great-grandchildren while 200 ultra-Orthodox Jews will have produced more than 5,000 (ultra-Orthodox) great-grandchildren. Also, more than 50 percent of Jews today marry non-Jews. The four factors formerly ensuring marriage within the Jewish community -- demography, propinquity, parental pressure and religious dedication -- are loosing their influence. Jewish success has increased assimilation; now borscht belt "marriage mills" and religious universities have been supplanted by secular schools and recreations. So the rift between the poles widens, but threats continue to encroach from outside. Historically, persecution has ignored the internal taxonomy of faith; to the anti-Semite, a Jew is a Jew is a Jew. Traditional anti-Semitism comes in pairs, a combination of fear and envy; Jews are stereotyped as either too weak or too powerful or both. Fortunately, anti-Semitism today infects groups with little institutional clout: civilian militias, holocaust deniers, the Christian far right or the Nation of Islam, to name a few. These groups define themselves in terms of what they are not: namely, Jewish. They promote negativity, and we should be weary of their advances; no confident religion should have to sell its gospel. The Tsuris Theory, therefore, has changed direction. Jews are no longer unified by a common threat; rather the self-styled "enemy" is linked by a shared, illogical antipathy for Jews. The challenge to Jews -- all Jews, from the secular to the ultra-Orthodox -- is therefore to create a positive Jewish identity which can endure threats from both inside and out. The "Jewish state of mind" for the next century should incorporate rather than exclude, question in order to innovate, then assess the religion in its cultural and political context. The principal of separation of church and state allowed Judaism to survive (sacredly) in Protestant America. Presumably, it will be under the same secular aegis that Jewish culture and religion will continue to flourish, a "many-branched menorah," as Dershowitz called it, a comprehensive religion to thrive in its time. But will the face of Jewish civilization in the next century have all its features? Can there be a Jewish "religion" that does not require belief in the supernatural or rituals that presuppose such belief? Will Jews still be Jewish? The answer is yes. Because we have something that no measure of diaspora or discrimination will ever erase: Chutzpa.