Jews in America Today

By Lenni Brenner. Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1986. 370 pages, $18.95 (cloth).

Reviewed by Carl Lesnor

Before 1948, when one spoke of Israel, one meant the descendants of Jacob, or the Jews as a religious collective. According to Zionist doctrine, the Land of Israel is the property of this ambiguous collective, now called "The Jewish People," and is defined on the basis of ancestry. The state of Israel, which enforces this claim, is an encompassing entity. First of all, Israeli sovereignty is not limited to Jews residing within its borders, but invested in "The Jewish People," who alone enjoy the right to settle in present-day Israel. Secondly, Israel owes its continued existence to prodigious financial contributions flowing from the United States, where an estimated 5.8 million, or roughly half, of the world's Jews happen to reside.

Lenni Brenner's Jews in America Today critically evaluates the American support base upon which the entire Zionist enterprise rests. The book presents a comprehensive picture of the changing demographic, economic, cultural, religious, and political status of the American Jewish community.

Assimilation of American Jews

Brenner combines careful documentation with critical observations and lively, often amusing, polemics. The portrait that emerges is of the successful integration of a once separate and distinct community into mainstream American society, particularly into the American middle class itself. Many Jews did not stop there. Brenner reports that Jewish Americans—about 2.5 percent of the population—account for 111 of Forbes' 400 richest Americans. In 1984, annual Jewish household income was $23,000, compared to $21,700 for Episcopalians. This prosperity has been documented by other observers, notably by Forbes reporter Gerald Krefetz.

ADL: Anti-Semitism Declining

It is not surprising that the increase in Jewish wealth has been accompanied by a decrease in American anti-Semitism, which was never very strong to begin with. Relying on data collected by such human rights watchdogs as the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League, Brenner concludes that anti-Semites are now more marginalized than ever. The periodic complaints of Jewish leaders about tolerance, rather than persecution, provide even more eloquent testimony to this fact. In 1980, for example, the head of the American section of the World Zionist Organization deplored the "cancerous growth" in the United States of assimilation!

Jewish Americans nonetheless seem to have difficulty in accepting or even believing that they are not disliked by non-Jews. A Yankelovich survey commissioned by the American Jewish Committee concluded: "The perceptions of American Jews regarding how non-Jews feel about (Jews) are consistently more negative than the beliefs actually expressed by non-Jews." It found, for example, that a large majority of Americans thought Jews "were warm and friendly," and found them acceptable marriage partners and potential presidents. Yet "most Jewish respondents believe that Jews are seen as unacceptable." Perhaps most interesting were the responses to questions about the possibility of an increase in anti-Semitism: "Seven percent of the non-Jews thought it possible in their own area and 21 percent thought it possible elsewhere in the country. No less than 40 percent of the Jews thought it possible in their own area, and 67 percent elsewhere."

Brenner: American Jews are Safe

To a large extent these differing perceptions are the result of the incessant diffusion of what Salo Baron, the doyen of Jewish historians, has called the "lachrymose view of Jewish history," now expressed in countless Holocaust films, publications, and commemorations. Although Leon Pinsker's view that anti-Semitism is an inherited and incurable psychosis has long been a Zionist article of faith, Brenner finds no reason to believe that Auschwitz might happen again here.

American-Jewish reality is less dramatic, according to Brenner. More than six Jews out of 10 have no affiliation to any secular or religious Jewish organization; they have an intermarriage rate of about 50 percent; and, as usual in cases of a rise in income, the community's birthrate is declining. Overall, the number of Jewish Americans practicing their faith is declining, thus reducing the spiritual basis of a "Jewish identity."

Jews in America Today is a refreshing and stimulating book, enriched by a wealth of interesting detail. In it Brenner punctures windbags with unflagging energy and excoriates knaves and fools. Perhaps his ultimate audacity, however, is his persistent reliance on solid research and rare good sense.

Carl Lesnor is on the editorial staff of Philosophical Forum, based in New York.