Luke Ford

Since antiquity, people have been predicting the demise of the Jews, some with dread, others with glee. But despite all the travails and tests faced by Jews over the centuries, it is only of late that such predictions have seemed plausible, at least in the U.S., where Jewry is on its way to becoming half its present number. As Elliott Abrams points out in his important new book, "Faith or Fear" (Free Press, 237 pages, $25), a majority of U.S. Jews now marry non-Jews, and only one in four of those homes raises its children with a primary Jewish identity.

This is not altogether a cause for lament. Mr. Abrams notes that the freedom of American Jews to assimilate is also a blessing—it means acceptance instead of hostility or bigotry. He cites Irving Kristol, who writes that "the danger facing American Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them, but that Christians want to marry them."

Intermarriage is indeed a mixed curse. As a religious Jew myself, I want Jews to marry Jews for religious, not ethnic, reasons. But intermarriage also represents great advantages—personal freedom and physical security. As Rabbi Leo Baeck, the German Jewish leader, said after World War II: "If every German family had a Jewish relative, there would not have been a Holocaust."

The cost is a loss of Jewish identity—and, more important, of Judaism itself. Mr. Abrams argues—persuasively, I believe—that American Jews will either become religious or largely disappear. Despite the hopes of various Jewish commentators (Alan Dershowitz comes to mind), there is no secular "Jewish culture" that can sustain Jews today. Even during the brief time that there was such a culture—for example, during the glory days of Yiddish literature and theater—no one stayed Jewish because of it. The only compelling reason to stay Jewish, Mr. Abrams argues, is religious.

Unfortunately, many American Jews feel antipathy toward religion: The people who brought God into the world are disproportionately active in removing Him from it. Mr. Abrams marshals depressing data showing that Jews are the least religious group in America. He also shows how most American Jews, and their non-Orthodox institutions, have equated Jewish security with removing religion from American public life. The American ship of state may be foundering, morally speaking, but most Jews want to make sure that, as it sinks, no passenger prays publicly.

Why are so many Jews so aggressively secular? Mr. Abrams cites one major reason—they fear Christianity. This fear emanates from nearly 2,000 years of Christian-inspired anti-Semitism. Of course, that was Europe, not America; but most American Jews remain paralyzed by their memories. Most seem unwilling to acknowledge that, by and large, Christians today are no longer anti-Semitic. Preoccupation with Christian anti-Semitism has led Jews to a radical secularism that helps create an amoral America and a de-Judaized Jewry.

While Mr. Abrams sympathizes with the values of most evangelical Christians, he describes how theological anti-Judaism continues among some evangelicals; and he identifies with the resentment that so many Jews feel toward Christian proselytizing when it is directed specifically at them. Nevertheless, Mr. Abrams’s answer to the American Jewish dilemma is faith, not fear. He recommends that American Jews emulate Orthodox Jews, for two reasons: The Orthodox keep their children Jewish, and they possess a defining characteristic of religious people—tension with the dominant culture. From abortion to same-sex marriage, the only Jewish movement resisting secular liberalism is Orthodoxy.

But as a solution to Jewish identity in America, Orthodoxy has its own problems. First, there is no reason to assume that most Jews will ever become Orthodox. Since the day Jews were liberated from Europe’s ghettos, no Jewish majority has ever chosen Orthodoxy. Second, keeping children in the faith is pretty easy if you are willing to separate from society— for example, by not eating in non-Jews’ homes or even in the homes of non-Orthodox Jews. The Amish also keep their children in their faith, through isolation. But such withdrawal from a decent society—even in the name of godliness—is not a Jewish ideal.

Third, with some noble exceptions, Orthodoxy is moving as right religiously as Reform Judaism and even Conservative Judaism are moving left socially. While the Reform rabbinate and some leading Conservative rabbis call for a redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations now checks whether even nonedible products (such as laundry detergent) are kosher, and some modern Orthodox day schools now prohibit girls from singing before audiences that include men.

With choices like these, American Jews are indeed in trouble. If we are ever to find a way out, "Faith or Fear" must first be read for its reasoned, balanced and compulsively readable explication of the American Jewish dilemma. Then, for most Jews the solution will be clear—leading a life, as the author does, of non-Orthodox religiosity.

By Richard John Neuhaus of www.FirstThings.com:

The Two Religions of American Jews

"Most American Jews have two religions, Judaism and Americanism, and you can’t have two religions any more than you can have two hearts or two heads." So writes Adam Garfinkle, executive editor of the National Interest, in the Winter 1996 issue of Conservative Judaism. The American civic religion, says Garfinkle, is based upon contract and has equality as its central dogma, while Judaism is based on revelation and necessary inequalities, not least the difference between Jews and others. "Moreover—and this is the key—contrary to common comfortable assumptions, the demands that both Judaism and Americanism place upon our loyalties are nearly all-encompassing to the extent that their spirits are taken seriously. Both ways of thinking about society are religious in that they depend on belief in certain values, and both generate universalist social visions from those values. Judaism is less concerned with abstract theology than with deeds, and the power of American values is not limited to the public realm but inhabits the heart as well. Name any consequential public policy issue, and both Judaism and Americanism speak to it with passion and fervor."

Those Jews fool themselves who think that America is innocently secular. Secularity is not neutral but creates a vacuum that is filled with the belief system of civic religion. "Most American Jews have two religions the way some men have one wife and one mistress, or some women one husband and one lover. It is a condition that can be managed, learned from, even enjoyed, sometimes for long periods. But it can never be brought to true conciliation." Those who observe Jewish law, or halakhah, have a view of authority that might be described as distinctly un-American. "In traditional Jewish thought, social and political authority lies in the hierarchical organization of society, which forms an interpretive funnel backwards through time to make God’s will knowable and applicable on earth. Individuals are born into a people, and into God’s covenant with that people. They are not free political agents, free to interpret the Torah on ill-defined or ambiguous issues. It is within such a paradigm that the Sanhedrin found its basic meaning centuries ago and that the authority of Talmud and post-talmudic responsa finds its binding force today." In addition, being "the chosen people" makes a real difference. "The Jews do not merge with the nations or convert them. They are, said Balaam in Numbers 23:9, a people destined to live alone. Although Jewish ideas are universalist, traditional Jews see themselves in exclusivist terms, a self-perception that has caused endless confusion and resentment among non-Jews. Jewish apologists like to emphasize the special burdens of this role and point to the costs it has exacted on the Jewish people in history—no doubt all true. But that does not change the basic fact, as even a casual reading of central Jewish texts shows, that Jews have believed themselves special, closer to the Divine than other peoples."

Pluralism Is No Answer

While some Jews think pluralism has solved the problem of being both fully Jewish and fully American, the contrary is indicated in ways both large and small. "They are correct in the sense that the enthronement of cultural pluralism in America gives everyone the right to be different, and the right to feel proud of it. Moreover, we have extended the right to be different from individuals to groups; hence affirmative action and class-action suits. As a result, thanks to various court decisions, it is now much easier for Jews to be Sabbath-observant in a secular environment than it was twenty-five years ago. Nevertheless, any group of Americans that does not eat hot dogs at baseball games, whose athletically precocious children do not play Little League on Saturday mornings, whose kids cannot sleep over at most neighbors’ houses because of concern with kashrut, and who feel strange when sent a Christmas card by oblivious coworkers, is not fully American in the cultural sense that most Americans understand the term."

Jewish difference should make a difference, says Garfinkle. "Does the fact that halakhic Jews—as well as the Amish, Mennonites, and others—choose not to partake in the potential universalism of America make them less culturally American? Yes, it does. Does the primacy of group identity among halakhic Jews clash with the individualist ethos of the American ideal? Yes. And no placing of Holocaust Museums in Washington—at base an attempt to turn a Jewish experience into an American one so that American Jews can pretend that the Jewish parochialism they love and cling to and the American universalism they admire and need do not conflict—can change that."

Among non-halakhic Jews, there are arguments between conservatives, neoconservatives, and liberals, but at bottom they are agreed about their ultimate allegiance to Americanism. "Not all non-halakhic Jews hear the same things from the oracles of American democracy, of course; some are conservative or neoconservative and they argue incessantly. When they do, they sometimes raise the question of who is politically correct in Jewish terms. The real ground of these arguments, however, has little to do with Judaism; at best, it has to do with Jews and Jewish parochial interests (like Israel). Thus, ‘Judaism’ is frequently impressed into the service of the contending sides, but in fact it is the passion of American politics, ideology, and foreign policy that really animates debate. Those both pro and con are engaged with religious energies in a discourse over religious principles, except that the god for whose sake all this is done is not the Holy One, blessed be He, but rather the Republic for which it, the American flag, stands."

Three Ways of Being Jewish

To make aliyah, or return to Israel, is important also to secular Jews who are Zionists. Garfinkle writes, "The Jewish people today is divided into three groups, a phenomenon unique to post-Emancipation times. First are those who define their Jewish peoplehood in halakhic terms, the traditional formula. Second are those Israeli Jews who define their Jewishness in modern and avowedly secular national terms, in secular Zionism. The second group will last at least as long as Israel survives and maybe beyond, and the first group as long as halakhah survives. Third are non-halakhic Jews in the Diaspora, including America. What of those who reject both halakhah and aliyah? On what basis can their Jewishness endure? If one asks them, they will say that one need not make aliyah to be a Zionist and one need not follow halakhah to be a Jew. Despite its popularity among American Jews, this answer makes no sense."

Garfinkle risks treading on some very sensitive toes: "One hates to admit that people like Gore Vidal or Patrick Buchanan are ever right, but those (admittedly few) American Jews who emphasize secular Zionism to define their Jewishness do raise the problem of dual loyalty. It is impossible for people who define their Jewishness solely in modern national terms to explain not emigrating to Israel. As for being a Jew by religion without halakhah, this has been attempted before and the eventual result, with precious few exceptions, has always been the same: failure and assimilation. Taken together, they form a veritable travesty of bad faith." Acknowledging the "optimists" who come up with occasionally hopeful indicators of Judaism’s flourishing in the future, Garfinkle is skeptical. "Jews have the lowest birthrate of any American group, and assimilation through intermarriage now exceeds 45 percent. As a result, Jews now constitute 2.7 percent of the American population whereas thirty years ago they constituted 3.7 percent. According to the June 1991 survey done by the Council of Jewish Federations, 87.5 percent of Jews surveyed said that they would accept the marriage of their child to a non-Jew."

A Grim Prognosis

The only promising and believable future for Judaism is for Jews to be Jews. "Withal, ask any serious historian of Jewish life if Jews would have survived as Jews throughout the centuries of exile without halakhah, and you will be told, ‘probably not.’ Thus, only by assuming that America is not exile (galut) for Jews, but more neutrally ‘Diaspora,’ can we say that dispensing with halakhah carries no danger of cultural extinction. But this assumption, common as it is, is almost certainly mistaken. The American civil religion and the surrounding social ethos have virtually destroyed the power of the Jewish worldview for most American Jews." The prognosis is grim: "It has been nearly two centuries since the Emancipation. In another two, there will probably be no significant non-halakhic Diaspora Jewry in America. Only one thing is delaying this process, and only two things might reverse it. The delaying factor is the State of Israel, which constitutes a focus of Jewish identification outside the normal American cultural context. But the positive association with Israel in the hearts and minds of American Jewry is eroding over time."

The gravamen of Adam Garfinkle’s article is that Jews, especially religious leaders, should stop fooling themselves about what they are doing. "We must speak truthfully about what we find before us. When Reform rabbis choose late-twentieth-century American or Western cultural standards over halakhic ones to render judgment about ordaining homosexuals or women as clergy, or when they officiate at mixed marriages, they are choosing to affirm contemporary American concepts of equality and authority and to reject Jewish ones. They are not reformulating Jewish tradition within a Jewish framework; they are trying to change Jewish tradition and law by substituting an Americanism whose basic principles are antithetical to Jewish ones."

What Garfinkle says about Jews and Judaism can, mutatis mutandis, be applied to the Christian circumstance in America. From a Christian perspective, however, I would make the argument that Christianity is not "antithetical" to the basic principles of Americanism. See, for instance, my recent article "The Liberalism of John Paul II" (May), in which I contend that we can and should reappropriate and revitalize the American liberal tradition. My strong intuition is that such a reappropriation and revitalization is also possible from an authentically Jewish standpoint. As with the arguments of Christians such as Methodist Stanley Hauerwas and Catholic David Schindler, I think Garfinkle’s stark antithesis between Americanism and authentic religion is strategically dead-ended and, in the final analysis, wrong. But of course it is for Jewish thinkers to explain why Garfinkle is wrong. The great contribution of his argument is to underscore that there is a very big problem, which, if not addressed effectively, may well result in the death of Judaism in America.