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May 12, 2013
Jewish community collapse disorder
A Guest Post by Dr. Harold Goldmeier
JEWISH COMMUNITY COLLAPSE DISORDER
By Dr. Harold Goldmeier, February 14, 2013
12/3 Nachal Luz, Bet Shemesh,
Israel
Am: 773-764-4357
harold.goldmeier@gmail.com
Intermarriage
is so prevalent in America, Europe and South America, once vibrant Jewish communities
in small cities and towns are collapsing and disappearing. The numbers from
recent population studies so alarm Israel’s leaders they spent one million
dollars on an ad campaign called MASA to convince Jews to marry Jews. Israel’s
Jewish Agency chief Natan Sharansky, an expert on assimilation witnessing
communities of Russian Jews disappear, is giving up on large scale aliyah from
Western countries. He is funneling resources to strengthen Jewish identity and
salvage Jewish communities outside Israel.
Adding
traction and intellectual gravitas to intermarriage is a vexing new narrative from
Rachel Shukert, a contributing editor at Tablet Magazine (February 1, 2013).
She extolls intermarriage and attacks small-minded parents for feeling bad when
their child marries out. She and other
like-minded authors shroud the lifestyle in scholastic authenticity. They cloak
it as a non-religious, democratic, spiritual energy field casting aside Jewish
law and 3,000 years of tradition and continuity. Intermarriage is the brick
wall just ahead of Leo Tolstoy’s observation, “The Jew is eternal. He is the
embodiment of eternity.”
The
union of Jew marrying non-Jew bore the Fiddler’s mark (as in Fiddler on the
Roof) of vilification, rejection and parental heartbreak throughout the
centuries. Screaming past grudging justification and acceptance in the
twentieth century, advocacy and virtue are the watchwords in the twenty-first.
The movement finds its roots in the democratic
notions of free society with its antipathy for all forms of discrimination. The
movement disavows personal sacrifice for commitment to group identity that
preserves culture and tradition. The result is Jewish Community Collapse Disorder.
On the brink of extinction, one Reform Rabbi in a mid-size Midwestern city
laments to me that if it not for the “shiksas” active in his temple, the last congregation
would have closed years ago.
On a cold February evening in 1992,
seated over dinner in a Chinese restaurant, Jamin Dershowitz tells his father
that he and live-in, Irish-Catholic girlfriend Barbara are going to marry. Harvard Law Professor, freehearted advocate
for Israel and the Jewish people, and father of Jamin, Alan instinctively
responds in Hebrew, “Mazel tov.” Theirs will be an interfaithless marriage, since none at the dinner
professes a religious faith in God, as he tells the story in The Vanishing American Jew.
Jamin’s Orthodox grandmother was devastated at
the news, and asked, “What did I do wrong?” Alan knows his grandchildren will likely
abandon their Jewish heritage. What bothers this father is a world without Jews
will be “a less noble, a much poorer place in every way that matters.” With a
sigh, the memory keeper accepts that I’m happy if my son is happy.
Blissful anecdotes about interfaith
religious traditions fill the Internet and family magazines. Moving from defense to offense, intermarriage
is the latest liberation movement from unjustifiable prejudice, racism, and prideful
disdain for all the hurt religion has brought mankind.
Shukert has notched up the literature creating
a manifesto for intermarriage. She pillories Jews who oppose intermarriage
wanting to maintain the tribe on the basis of antipathetic religious and
cultural intolerance. To her, they harbor
the same shocking, noxious feelings as homophobes repressing gay people. Her comparison
turns the stomach of those who give no quarter to racism and intolerance, but
love and practice religious preference in soul mates and lifestyles. Shukert is
“puzzled…why would you possibly care who someone else wants to sleep with?” Is
that all marriage is to her, really?
On the attack, she charges opposing
intermarriage is furiously divisive in a global environment, sanctimonious,
pissy, and tribalist. Do not, she warns, disapprove of your child’s abandonment
of his religion, tradition, and continuity.
“A child’s happiness should never be conditional on her parent’s
limitations,” and it is “wrong (to)
demand that their children choose partners on the basis of what makes their
parents comfortable.”
This dribble
appears in Tablet Magazine that offers “A New Read on Jewish Life.” TM Together, they promulgate a manifesto for the
Jewish community swan song. There is no arguing with her logic from an
intellectual perspective, nor from parent point of view. It is an epic waste of
time and message, but there are things the Jewish leadership can do before it
is too late.
We need new action plans in the face
our Community Collapse Disorder. Momentum is on the side of intermarriage. It cannot be prevented
in a free society, but Judaism need not take a back seat to modernity. Ours is
an enriching and fulfilling lifestyle, one many turn to at lifecycle events. One critical time is when PTA meetings replace
lust. The successful baal tshuva movement reaches out to drifting Jews, and it
must employ the same tactics of love and acceptance to intermarrieds. Persuade
them to accept Judaism and bring Jewishness into their lives. We have to extend
our horizons, displace our emotions of guilt, shame and rejection when Jews
marry out. This will require a concomitant change in how we currently handle
conversions.
The conversion
process today is pharisaic regulated by the Orthodox adhering to the strictest
narrow interpretations of Jewish Law. They purposely exclude potential converts
issuing proclamations that vastly outnumber those from previous generations.
They make conversion exhausting, exasperating, and nearly impossible. A return to reason and sanity after the last
fifty years of religious delirium can give new trajectory to Jewish continuity.
Instead of abandoning them bring them in. If they don’t become part of our
community will their children return, or are we writing them off too?
Shukert is considered “a hugely funny, wildly smart, and
menacingly original writer.” She and her husband, Ben Abramowitz, cast curses
on Republican Jews during the last election. Let’s hope one of theirs will not likely
be our destiny: “May your grandchildren
baptize you after you’re dead.” Shukert knows how to spin a good curse.
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The orthodox rules of conversion are simply one tiny part of why Jews are wholesale rejecting Judaism as a religion; although not as a race.
ReplyDeleteThose who do convert, through any stream other than orthodox, are not counted as Jews by Israel, where the question of who is a Jew? is controlled by the strict ultra-orthodox.
The recent attacks on the women of the wall is another example of the narrow minded control that the ultra-orthodox demand. To say nothing of the stories of spitting on women, throwing stones at cars driving on shabbat, discriminatory schooling, special rights regarding army service, schooling, finances... all the while, demanding and controlling the definition of the term JEW.
So if the choice is, as Israel has made so clear, a Jew as the ultra-orthodox defines it, or a Jew merely as a race, I and so many other will continue to reject the religion of Judaism while maintaining our pride in our heritage as a people. And if that means that my children or grandchildren will not be counted as Jews, whose fault is that really?
I was hoping you would "way" in on this post...
DeleteDefinition of who is a Jew is not "controlled" by the ultra othodox, but by true Torah law.
DeleteAcceptance of those who converts out of convenience without a sincere devotion to the Jewish religion and acceptance of its observance including respect for the holiness of shabbos and laws of kashrut is a sham. It will only lead to the further destruction of the Jewish poeople as we know it. What is the point of converting just to "look the part" in a marriage of religious convenience where both parties to the couple really are not that commited Jewishly in the first place. Failure to properlhy educate children and not sending them to Jewish Days schools is a forumla for disaster for the future of our religion.
Halacha has kept us together until now, and it will continue to keep us together in the future. Bending or stretching the rules is already done to a certain point, but it is forbidden to publicize this because it will simply be exploited by the masses. Even voting in Rav Stav will not change anything. Rav Stav has already stated numerous times that he will not stray one bit from Rav Ovadia's psaks.
ReplyDeleteI made aliyah almost 20 years ago. Just before aliyah, I was seeing a non-Jewish girl. Here, I met an Israel, got married and have many children, definitely many more than I would have even dreamed about there.
Judaism is blooming in Israel. Please come and live it, you don't know what you are missing.
Josh
ReplyDeleteThats a pretty dogmatic statement from someone who is clearly a believer with no attempt at critical thinking: Halacha has kept us together and will continue to do so. Except for the fact that it is simply untrue, its a fine statement for those who don't actually know history and therefore cannot extrapolate reasonable possibilities for the future.
BTW, I live in Israel too. And living here it is only too clear that while the race of Jews may be growing, the religion of Judaism is in its death throes. The religion is controlled by groups that bear little or no resemblance to actual judaism- between the idolatry of rabbis and the Islamic/christian forms of sexual fundamentalism, just 2 clear examples of how Judaism today has been transformed and hijacked.
You need serious therapy. If there are others like you, we would not survive.
Deletewhy do you say religion is in its death throes?
ReplyDeleteyou or I may not like certain things that happen in the name of religion (probably different things), but to me it looks like religion is growing around Israel. I see traditional people becoming more religiously involved all around the country.
For a few reasons:
ReplyDeleteFirst, secular and atheist Judaism and atheism in general is growing and becoming more publicly accepted.
Second, Organized religion, both judaism and in general, is growing less respected and less believed - as every research report shows
Third, as the fundamentalist groups continue to become more extreme and segregated they have become and will continue to become less livable lifestyles, practically, emotionally, ad financially.
Sometimes when you live inside the eye of a tornado, everything looks just fine. But from the outside, orthodox judaism is collapsing and becoming more strange looking and harder to accept by the rest of world jewry. not out of hatred for god or the orthodoxy, but out of repulsion for it's non-jewishness
please point me to such a study. I'd like to see it
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197
ReplyDeletehttp://ivn.us/independent-americans/2013/02/13/losing-our-religion-study-shows-decline-in-religious-affiliation/
http://www.americanhumanist.org/HNN/details/2012-04-the-state-of-religion-declining-belief-in-god-worldwide
http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/851/features/jewish-studies-in-decline/
just a few, google studies on the decline of religion, can check worldwide, american, european, Israel, general etc....
Thoughtful piece Harold. Great responses everyone. Tough call: 1) On one hand, the "stick", i.e. shunning and expelling Jews who intermarried historically did work. And there is only so much a tradition can bend before it breaks. 2) On the other hand, given the facts on the ground, the "carrot strategy" that many Conservative and Reform synagogues have adopted, of "better to gain a non-Jewish spouse and facilitate their conversation, then lose a Jew" seems reasonable.
ReplyDeleteRafi and Danny, I think you are both correct, "religion is thriving" and "religion is in its death throes" in Israel. From my limited perspective as an outsider, it would seem that: 1) Israel is facing a growing divide, the Orthodox are getting more Orthodox and the secular are drifting towards atheism and abandonment of tradition. 2) For this I blame the dualism that the Ultra Orthodox establishment has imposed on Israel via their state sponsored monopoly on traditional functions (weddings, etc). 3) When faced with the choice of Ultra Orthodox ceremonies or nothing, many will opt for the latter. 4) Whereas the pluralistic model in America, that allows for Conservative and Reform synagogues, has allowed for the "religious middle" to have a space to express their Judaism.
ReplyDelete