U.S. Jewish Establishment and Zionism, Not Jews, Feel Crisis

By Lenni Brenner

The Israel-Diaspora Identity Crisis: A Looming Disaster is a recent pamphlet by Isi Leibler, of the World Jewish Congress governing board. It is typical of a strange genre of Jewish establishment handwringing spawned by the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey.

Leibler bemoans the "eventual disappearance of...perhaps even a majority of Diaspora Jewry." He writes that "It may well be too late for anything to halt that slide to oblivion [because] at least half the Diaspora's Jews are not affiliated with any form of institutionalized Jewish activity."

In reality, however, world Jewry isn't disappearing or in crisis. It is thriving. American Jewry is the richest religious or ethnic grouping in the country and Diaspora Jews are the most educated stratum in the world. It is the Jewish establishment and Zionism that face "catastrophic decline," not the Jews.

The NJPS counted 3.2 million American households containing one or more present or former Jews, coming to 8.2 million individuals. Of these, 4.2 million were born Jews who considered themselves Jewish by religion. Another 185,000 were Jews "by choice," with about 70 percent of these formally converted. Another 1.1 million "secular Jews" are born Jews unaffiliated to any religion. Rolled together, these are considered the "core Jews," the clientele of organized Jewry.

The survey also counted 1.3 million people of Jewish descent following a non-Jewish religion. Some 210,000 personally had adopted another creed. Another 415,000 adults were raised from birth in another religion. Additionally there are 700,000 youngsters under 18 with a core Jewish parent but raised in a non-Jewish faith. Another 1.35 million Gentile adults lived in these households. Some were roommates. Others were sexual partners "without benefit of clergy." The rest were spouses of core Jews.

About 69 percent of married Jews lived with another born Jew or convert to Judaism. But the 31 percent married to Gentiles is dramatically up from a mere eight percent in 1970. And the percentage continues to rise. The intermarriage rate between 1985 and 1990 was 52 percent. Moreover, in our feminist age, the percentage of spouses who converted to Judaism dropped to nine percent by1990.

Only 25 percent of the children under 18 in mixed marriages were being raised as Jews. Forty-five percent were raised in another religion and 30 percent without any religion. According to Steven Cohen, an establishment sociologist, "the vast majority of mixed-married Jews will have non-Jewish grandchildren."

Most people marry someone they meet in their neighborhood, or at work or school. Since the onset of massive suburbanization, most Jews don't live in Jewish neighborhoods. With anti-Semitism in free-fall, Jews are found throughout the economy.

"College is a disaster area for Judaism, Jewish loyalty and Jewish identity."

Highlighting the Jewish establishment's intractable problem is an assessment by Irving Greenberg of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, that "college is a disaster area for Judaism, Jewish loyalty and Jewish identity." One study, David Singer's "A Profile of the Jewish Academic," bluntly declared that "Jewish professors...regard themselves as academics first and as Jews second."

A June 16, 1995 article on Hillel, B'nai Brith's student arm, in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency's Daily News Bulletin, reports that "of the more than 400,000 Jewish students...only about...12.5 percent are involved in any Hillel activities....25 percent are so alienated from Jewish life that they can be counted out." With the patronage of billionaire Edgar Bronfman, Hillel hopes to reach the rest. But these students, a bulwark of socio-economic liberalism, are not about to join an outfit with Paine Webber Reception Centers, as at Harvard's Hillel house.

Zionism to the rescue! The establishment hopes to send 50,000 teenagers per year to Israel to find their roots. This year they spent $1 million on subsidized tours. "An increase over 1994 of fewer than 500," was the result described in "Can't Give a Ticket to Israel Away," in the July 27 Jerusalem Report. The richest Americans, Jews are the most traveled. But "only 20 percent...have ever visited Israel," says an Israeli Ministry of Tourism official. "Without some involvement with a synagogue or youth movement," teens "don't think much about visiting."

That is only part of the explanation. The Reform movement is the country's largest Jewish sect. Its rabbinical students must spend a year in Israel. Yet, according to Cohen, "much of the Reform public doesn't share the passionate involvement...that has come to characterize the...institution." Only three percent of Reform parents had "a sizable interest" in their children settling in Israel.

Non-Orthodox Ceremonies

Zionism's Reform rabbis never stop talking about "prophetic Judaism" and its "passion" for "social justice." But none is a prophet "in his wrath." This year a delegation went to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem to conduct a mixed-gender service. However the Daily News Bulletin for March 17 reported that the Reform rabbis submitted to performing it "at the Wall's southern flank, the area the Israeli government...seems to have unofficially designated for...ceremonies of the non-Orthodox."

They met with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He evaded dealing with the fact that in Israel Reform rabbis can't perform legally valid marriages or divorces. And then they did nothing. Their Israeli co-thinkers were outraged: "Sometimes I feel that there is no real commitment to build a Reform movement in Israel," Rabbi Meir Azari said "as other Israeli Reform rabbis nodded their heads in agreement."

These Americans know that mobilizing their congregations to fight seriously for their movement's rights in Israel will only increase their congregants' alienation from Zionism. But, as long as they don't have their rights, preaching Zionism to their ranks is wasted lung power. Their youth resolve pro-Zionist Reform's dead-end contradiction by voting with their feet, i.e., overwhelmingly opting for biological assimilation.

An American Jewish Committee poll conceded that only 22 percent of American Jews still think of themselves as Zionists, while 32 percent put distance between themselves and Israel. But the dramatic reality behind those numbers is that the world's Jews are moving in two directions. Most, especially the youth, are exploding away from Jewish identification, at greater or lesser speed, while a minority are imploding into a fanatic swarm. Recently a U.S. friend of Ariel Sharon punched dovish Israeli Communications Minister Shulamit Aloni, a woman who endorses Arab-Jewish marriages.

The International Rabbinical Coalition for Israel contains elements who New York's Forward says "have even suggested that the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin or Foreign Minister Peres would be halachically permissible." Even Leibler warns that relying on pilgrimages to Israel "as the panacea for all the Diaspora's ills is somewhat naive." Baruch Goldstein, "the murderer from Kiryat Arba," came from Brooklyn, only to be "nurtured in Israel's religious society."

Some Zionists dread this polarization. They don't want to be locked up in a "community" that consists only of themselves and these wackos. Reform's Albert Vorspan says that "many liberal Jews are beginning to ask themselves painful questions....'Am I more connected to a Lubavitch chasid, a racist JDL hoodlum, or a rabbi who panders to Pat Robertson than I am to a Christian who takes social gospel seriously?'" But don't wait for such "moderates" to break with the ultras. Most will remain joined-at-the-temple to the crazies by their mutual belief that the Jews of the world are one nation.

By now readers will ask why Washington still gives Israel billions per year if the majority of Jews never give Zionism a single penny. But didn't Mark Twain truthfully jest that "the United States does not have a hereditary criminal class, except for Congress"? The Forward has quoted sociologist Cohen as saying that "If money matters, Jews count a hell of a lot and Israel-oriented Jews give a disproportionate amount to presidential candidates."

To be sure, opposition to Arab nationalism, anti-Sovietism and concern about Islamic fundamentalism have been adduced at times by "statesmen" to justify patronage of Zionism. But ethno-religious demagoguery is the black-lung disease of democracy. No one should be "shocked, shocked" that, in a capitalist society, pandering to the chauvinism of the richest stratum in the country became a central leitmotiv of our politics. The only thing that is unique is the fact that today's Jews are the "beneficiaries" rather than the victims of the opportunists.

On the June 28th first anniversary of his death, Menachem Schneerson, the late Lubavitcher rebbe, was given the Congressional Gold Medal, America's highest civilian award. In an accompanying message, Bill Clinton welcomed the opportunity to "recognize a revered leader who was a great moral inspiration...to people of all religions and faiths." Newt Gingrich praised Schneerson for living his ideals. (His "ideals" included opposition to restoring any land to the Palestinians.)

Orthodoxy is only 6.8 percent of American Jewry, and even the majority of Orthodox reject the widely-held Lubavitcher notion that Schneerson was the messiah. The movement disgusts most other Jews. Yet there was no secularist or assimilationist opposition when the bipartisan trashmouths praised this obscurantist, in gross violation of at least the spirit of the First Amendment's separation of religion and state. Overwhelmingly Democrats, these "liberals" take such "Jew-wooing" as "just politics."

Jewish chauvinism has no coercive state-power over Jews here. Therefore few feel any obligation to combat it. Zionism is avoided rather than opposed. Except for a tiny minority of old leftists, campus radicals, and some others, Zionism is frowned upon because it has nothing rational to offer Jews, rather than because it oppresses Arabs. Once they opt out of Jewish separatism, most youth have no more interest in the Middle East than their Gentile peers.

Nevertheless principled agitation by those of us—Jew, Gentile, atheist and believer alike—who worship the First Amendment's anti-establishment clause can reach those bright Jewish kids, and their Gentile colleagues. We have religious peace because we have separation of religion and state. We can convince them that the people of Israel/Palestine are as entitled to that same peace. But the only time that country will ever see it is under a new, secular Arab-Israeli regime that separates religion and state, exactly as we do here. Then our politicians—unworthy heirs to Jefferson and Madison—will not be able to get away with slipping domestic Zionist money into their campaign coffers, and sliding billions out of the taxpayers' pockets to put it in the hands of an Israeli theocracy.

Lenni Brenner is the author of Jews in America Today, The Iron Wall, and the new AET White Paper The Anti-Defamation League's National Director is Crazy Like a Foxman, all of which are available through the AET Book Club.