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Definition: A Jewish telegram is one
which reads, "Start worrying.
Letter follows."
I have told that story to Jewish
audiences very many times. Each
time, it works; people laugh in
appreciative self-recognition. They
understand the story: to be a Jew
means to worry. We worry about
Israel, we worry about intermarriage, we worry about our survival,
we worry about anti-Semitism, we
worry about Soviet Jews, we worry
about Jewish identity. We worry
about war, and we worry about
peace. When the day is so glad that
the poet announces, "All's right
with the world," we know that
something must be wrong; he has
overlooked the cloud, the flaw, the
imminent crisis. He has been lulled;
the storm is brewing just out of
sight, we can feel it in our ancient
bones.
A sixth sense that can alert to
danger is a very handy resourceunless it is so enlarged that it lacks
all capacity to discriminate, unless it
erodes the five fundamental senses.
One who smells danger with every
sniff does not have a super-sensitive
nose; he is a nasal drip.
By any rational standard, the
story of the Jewish people this past
decade or so has been and continues to be a marvelous success
story. We have endured diverse
threats and assorted crises, and
appear able-if not always willingto deal sensibly with the problems
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we now face. Those problemsthere are many of them-are interesting and challenging. But they are
problems, not crises. They are the
kinds of problems that all peoples
have. They cannot be ignored, but
they should not be exaggerated.
The Jewish success story. In the late
1950's and early 1960's, it was commonly supposed that the American
Jewish community was doomed.
Look Magazine had published its
famous essay, "The Vanishing
Jew," and new intermarriage statistics indicated that we were rapidly
succumbing to the lure of assimilation. It was obvious that the native
born generation which was soon to
come of age was no match for the
generation of immigrants that had
shaped and directed the community
since its inception; the new generation had neither the will nor the way
to take over.
Elsewhere? Soviet Jewry
languished. Even had there been a
basis for confidence that the Jewish
instinct remained intact among the
Jews of the Soviet Union, it was perfectly clear that the Russians would
not permit their Jews to leave. And
Israel, of course, was surrounded by
utterly implacable enemies; no comfort there. All in all, a bleak picture, amply reflected in the journals
and symposia of the day.
And still reflected, in 1979, in our
journals and symposia, despite
dramatic change in our circum-
stances. Consider, for example, that
between 1968 and the end of 1979,
according to the best present estimates, some 225,000 Jews will have
left the Soviet Union for freedom.
That works out to about one of
every twelve Soviet Jews. If the pessimist wants to insist that the glass
of Soviet Jewish emigration is still
more than ninety percent empty, he
has the facts on his side. Nor can we
be confident that this year's total of
50-60,000 emigrants will be permitted again next year. But is it not
a signal success that we debate
whether there will be "only" 25,000
or whether there will be 50,000 permitted out next year? Is it not a
cause for jubilation that there are
225,000 out already? Ought we not
be proud that our own persistent
efforts, from noisy street demonstrations to sophisticated Washington lobbying to continued encouragement of the Soviet Jews themselves, those marvelously courageous people, have been so visibly
rewarded?
Give us a silver lining, and we set
off in search of the cloud: Too few
of the Russian Jews are going to
Israel, those that come here don't
want to identify with the community, the costs of resettlement are
astronomical. Worry, worry, worry.
What can we, the tiny, oppressed,
impotent Jewish people do?
Are we afraid that if we permit
ourselves to admit that we have won
a wonderful victory we will relax our
As a people, we do
not know how to deal
with success: it is a
stranger, and when it
enters our home, we do
not know its name.
effort and lose our will? That is part
of it, no doubt. But the larger part is
that we have had a sense of failure
and foreboding bred into our bones.
We do not know how to deal with
success; it is a stranger, and when it
enters our home, we do not know its
name.
Consider: After thirty years of
war and near-war and blind, stupid,
murderous hostility, Israel's most
potent Arab neighbor signs a peace
treaty with Israel. Yes, the peace is
fragile; yes, the problems that
remain to be dealt with are far more
complex than those that have been
resolved; yes, the PLO persists; yes,
the future is far from secure. But
Egypt and Israel HAVE SIGNED
A PEACE TREATY!
Our reaction is to schedule symposia on "The Crisis of Peace."
In Boston, a special committee
was created after Camp David to
prepare for a community-wide celebration of peace. Finally, after all
the months of diplomatic bickering, the committee moved into high
gear. A rally was planned for the
day after the signing, a rally in
downtown Boston, outside historic
Faneuil Hall. Had the rally been
called on the eve of war, with no
time for planning or preparations,
ten thousand Jews would surely
have assembled. But to note the
miracle of peace, after months of
planning, we managed eight hundred-half of them bused in from
our captive day schools.
Another day, another peace
treaty? Not quite. It is not that we
are jaded. And it is surely not that
we are realistic; there is no realism
in chronic, instinctive suspicion. It
is, quite simply, that we have no
ritual, no lively precedent for welcoming success. It does not suit our
vale of tears. While we have no
problem with success as individuals, as a community it is the bell
of alarm rather than of jubilation
that we have been taught to ring.
Consider: over the course of the past
decade, leadership in every important arena of Jewish life and expression in this country has passed from
the hands of the immigrant generation to the hands of the native born.
The transfer has been accomplished
with grace and with skill. It was a
transfer that was thought unlikely:
How could we expect the native
born to care as deeply, to remember as lavishly, to sigh as profoundly as their parents? Yet it has
happened, and there is no reason at
all to believe that we are any the
worse for it. On the contrary: In
terms of professional competence,
Judaic knowledge and commitment, or virtually any other relevant standard, the new leadership
often represents an impressive
advance.
Consider, too, the growing evidence that the dispersal of American Jews from the old cities of the
Northeast to the sunbelt region, a
dispersion which was once thought
would lead inevitably to the disappearance of whole communities, has
lead instead to the development of
important new centers of Jewish life
and activity. Think, for example, of
Los Angeles. There was a time when
it appeared that the Jews who
flocked to Los Angeles were eager
to find a city that matched their own
rootlessness. Aside from Fairfax,
home to the poor and the elderly,
there was no such thing as a Jewish
neighborhood in Los Angeles. And
today? Today there are Orthodox,
Conservative, and Reform seminaries in Los Angeles which, in
selected areas, outshine their
mother institutions back East; there
are synagogues whose important
innovations are attended nationwide; nowhere has the fight for
Soviet Jewry been pursued as
aggressively or as imaginatively;
there is, in this community of nearly
half a million Jews, an emerging
Jewish life of quality and purpose.
Consider Jewish studies programs on dozens of campuses,
consider the continuing philanthropy of the community, consider
the increase in conversion to
Judaism, consider the evidence that
growing numbers of Jews have come
to view Judaism not as a condition,
but as an aspiration.
Yet note that none of this is mirrored in ouy self-image and selfunderstanding. Just the opposite:
We continue to distort the information we are given, to squeeze it into
the mold of failure we know so well.
The most enduring illustration of
that distortion is our response to the
very interesting data we now have
on intermarriage. Everyone
"knows," of course, that intermarriage is a calamity, a calamity of
epidemic proportions. It is, therefore, especially interesting-and
instructive-to examine the statistical foundation for this perception.
We do not have precise data on the
present rate of intermarriage. The
best estimate we have derives from
&theNational Jewish Population
study, which found that in the
period 1966-72, 32.7 percent of all
new marriages involving at least one
birthright Jew involved only one
birthright Jew.
Now that seems a very cumbersome way to say that during those
years, the intermarriage rate
approached one-third. The reason
for the cumbersome formulation,
however, is that the intermarriage
rate did not, in fact, approach one
third. The statistic describes marriages rather than individuals, and a
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brief excursion into the difference
will show how sloppy citation begets
sloppy perception.
Imagine, for example, a hundred
Jews who are about to be married.
Fifty of them are men, and fifty of
them are women. (Note, therefore,
that the maximum number of
Jewish-Jewish marriages these one
hundred people could accomplish
would be fifty.) Now imagine that
ten of the men and ten of the women
decide to marry people who were
not born Jews. Twenty Jews, in all,
marrying "out"; twenty Jews,
twenty marriages. The remaining
forty men and forty women do
marry each other, and so produce
forty Jewish-Jewish marriages.
Thus we have forty endogamous
marriages-born Jew to born Jewand twenty "other" marriages.
o-thirds to one-.
That is the situation, roughly,
which the National Jewish Population Study found. Accordingly, it is
take to say that one-third of
the Jews prefer to marry non-Jews.
That is simply not the case. Twenty
out of one hundred is not one-third.
The fact is that the "one-third rate
of intermarriage" represents a condition in which four out of every five
born Jews who get married choose a
born Jew as their mate. And even if
the statistic has grown from onethird to 40 percent since 1972, as
some observers have suggested, we
are still dealing with a condition in
ate of conversion
to Judaism has increased, and
dramatically. That figure, in the
context of intermarriage, now
approaches one-third. Accordingly,
if we go back to our hypothetical
100 people, and look at the twenty
of them whose spouses were not
born Jews, we find that about seven
of those twenty marriages involve a
conversion to Judaism. Those seven
belong with the forty Jewish marmiages, not with the twenty intermarriages-and that gives us a total
of 47 Jewish marriages (out of an
original maximum of 50) as against
13 mixed marriages. And, finally,
we know that in a substantial
number of those remaining 13, there
will be some effort to raise the children as Jews even in the absence of
conversion.
In short, the much-lamented
"one-third rate of intermarriage"
describes a situation which most
likely involves no loss whatsoever of
potential Jewish family units.
That is not to say that intermarriage is not a problem. Minimally,
the Jewish commitment of the intermarried cannot be taken for
granted. (For that matter, neither
can the Jewish commitment of the
non-intermarried.) There are many
aspects of intermarriage which need
to be studied, considered, dealt with.
But a problem is not a crisis. We
can deal with intermarriage far
more intelligently if we understand
it for what it is-a problem that
flows from our full-fledged participation in an open society-and
refuse to be panicked into perceiving it as symptomatic of wholesale
rejection of and defection from the
Jewish community.
The origins of failure. We have
problems galore. Our birthrate is a
problem, and our birthright is a
problem. Israel's safety is a problem and Jews in diverse other countries live in varying degrees of
danger. Now and again, some of our
problems flare up into crises, which
the dictionary defines as decisive
turning points. But we do not careen
from turning point to turning point,
not except by our own choice and
distorted sense to things. "Gevald!"
is not a proper slogan for a people
that has lived productively for 4,000
years.
The choice of words here makes a
difference. The Jewish people has
not simply "survived" for 4,000
years. We have done considerably
better than that. We have not
merely "endured" for all this time.
We have made love, and written
books, and dreamed dreams-some
of which we have realized-and we
have tried, and sometimes succeeded, to be decent. Survived?
Endured? What sort of mealymouthed language is that to
describe the noble past to which
we are heir?
The much lamented
"one-third rate of
intermarriage" most
likely involves no loss
whatsoever of potential
Jewish family units.
But then how is it that we see things
in the shadowed way we do?
In our own generation, the most
obvious answer is the Holocaust.
There is no understanding, not now,
not ever, of how such horror could
be visited upon us. One can hardly
be surprised if a people that has witnessed the butchery of one-third of
its number loses its sense of balance,
becomes nervous and apprehensive.
Earlier generations of Jews had a
lengthy chronicle of disaster to deal
with; we have that whole chronicle,
and the crushing added weight of its
grotesque climax.
But if we use the Holocaust to
prove that only the cynic is a realist, we pervert the message the
slaughtered poets left for us, the
message which has in fact informed
our behavior since the Kingdom of
Darkness. To understand the past,
you have to know its future. The
future of the Jewish people after the
Holocaust has not been to cast itself
down into mourning. We remember, oh yes we remember. We
remember, and we build. We
remember, and we plant. We
remember, and we laugh, and have
children, and worship God. That is
what we do, what we insist on doing.
Call it defiance, call it affirmation,
call it stiff-neckedness; we will not,
we have not, let ourselves become a
victim people.
We do not behave as victims; then
why do we think of ourselves as
victims? Why, when we look in the
mirror, do we not see ourselves as
we are, vigorous and vital?
It is not just the Holocaust that
haunts us and distorts our image of
ourselves. It is also the way in which
our history is read and taught. Salo
Baron once referred to the "lachrymose interpretation of Jewish history." According to that interpretation, encountered everywhere, our
history consists of an unending
series of calamities and catastrophes, some actually experienced,
the rest narrowly escaped. In every
age, our enemies rise up to destroy
us; too often, they succeed. Ours is a
dismal religion: its weather is a
steady drizzle, interrupted only by
occasional thunderstorm or hurricane; its costume is the shroud; its
companion is fear; its teary vision
sees only the grim half-emptiness of
the glass of life. Exile, pogrom,
auto-da-fk, martyrdom, persecution, persecution, persecution. At
the height of our joy, we break the
glass, and we know that the broken
glass is the real metaphor for our
lives.
Is it not so? Is this not what we
have been taught? Do we not know
that joy is ephemeral, ours on loan,
that suffering is our authentic
destiny? "In this world," goes the
song, "pain and sighs; in the next
world, Shabbat and rest."
But it is in this world, of course, that
the State of Israel has been attesting our competence and our skill for
thirty-one years, and it is in this
world that Russian Jews have
insisted upon freedom, and it is in
this world that America's Jews have
achieved distinction in philanthropy and have recently rediscovered Jewish learning. In this
world.
Unfortunately, it is also in this
world that old traditions and old
perceptions die hard, and that some
leaders and some teachers think it a
clever tactic to encourage the sense
of foreboding we carry with us.
There are leaders and teachers who
do not trust their people, their students; they fear the consequence of
freedom, of normalcy. And so they
sow the seeds of panic, in the hope
that a frightened community will
draw together. They see us straining at the leash, and they think we
want to run away. They seek to
tether us with Judaism; untethered,
they suppose, we will stray, we will
escape. They cannot understand
that it is a strangling leash they bind
us with, that we will choke on their
diet of garlic and tears. We want to
know the whole of it, not just the
parts of sorrow and of woe. We
want a piece of the dream, not just
the fear and foreboding.
We do not want to be managed
and manipulated by hyperbole, nor
do we need to be. When a swastika
is daubed on a tombstone, we take
notice: somewhere, there is a
vandal, perhaps a maniac. But a
random swastika is not a resurgence of anti-Semitism. The case for
Jewish education does not need to
be made in alarmist terms. Neither
anti-Semitism generally, nor the
Holocaust specifically, need to be
invoked as arguments in favor of
Jewish identity or Jewish philanthropy.
Of course we are a wounded
people. Numberless tragedies are
tattooed on our hearts. We have
seen the abyss. But we have also
seen Sinai. The waters once parted
for us. In the midst of madness, we
have found meaning. If we introduce the story of the Jewish people
as conclusive evidence of cruelty, of
the inevitability of disaster, we misread that story and mislead its audience. The history of the Jewish
people is a proof text for hope, for
redemption, for faithfulness to a
compelling vision of a world made
right. It is the hope we represent and
not the fear we nurture that is the
inducement, the incentive, the
motive. It is the hope that binds us.
Last month. a columnist for the
Jerusalem post wrote that "It
is extremely doubtful that within a
few generations there will be many
Americans who have remained
Jewish in any meaningful sense
of the word. Any thoughtful observer of American Jewry cannot
but be struck by the ravages of
assimilation."
The columnist's ignorance must
be forgiven. It comes about, presumably, because he has read what
we have written and heard what we
have said about ourselves. He is
also, most likely, the bearer of ideological bias: Classic Zionist theory
cannot accommodate the possibility that there can be a Jewish life
in the Diaspora that is safe and
meaningful.
But that is his problem. Our problem is that when we read his words,
we are most likely to nod our assent.
And the danger of that assent is that
it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet what strikes the
genuinely thoughtful, as distinguished from the merely instinctive, observer of American Jewry is
how persistently we refute the grim
predictions of our imminent demise.
I think of the lawyers in Los
Angeles who meet during their
lunch hour to study Jewish law, of
the housing for the elderly in Baltimore that has been built adjacent to
several of the synagogues of that
community, of the Russian Jew in
Shreveport who insisted on making
a significant contribution to the
UJA campaign just six months after
his arrival, of the rabbis who have
walked with Cesar Chavez, and of
those who have chained themselves
to the White House gates on behalf
of Soviet Jewry, of the wisdom and
the beauty in the new prayer books
of the Reform and Conservative
movements, of the emergence of a
cadre of Jewish communal workers
whose training in Judaism has at
last been recognized as no less
essential to their jobs than the traditional social work skills, of a hundred stories that belie the doomsayers, of a hundred songs, some
old, some new, that we are learning
how to sing. It is time for us to hear
the music we are making.