Talk to W Z Congress: July 24,1992

1. I suppose I have to justify my designation as the

representative of American Jewry, and by indirection of Diaspora

Jewry. This is less capricious than it might appear. I am an

American Jew. Lke any Jewishly concerned American I visit Israel.

My last visit has extended for 23 years, but my heart remains

with the New York Yankees.

2. When I use the term "American Jews" I mean "most, but not all

American Jews". That is what I mean to say even if I forget to

qualify the term or even if you don't remember hearing me say it.

The same is true for every other group whom I may mention -- for

example Orthodox Jews, or Israeli Jews, or Diaspora Jews.

3. All the issues discussed in the video we just saw are

important issues on the public agenda of American Jews. How

deeply they exercise Jews in their private lives is quite another

matter. I suspect they do not. If they did American Jewish life

would be in much better shape. But I don't mean to minimize their

importance. They concern me as well. I have written about them

and spoken about them. Sometimes without a lecture fee. But I am

not sure that the context in which the discussion of these

questions takes place yields effective answers. I don't mean to

challenge the agenda of American Jews but rather the underlying

assumptions upon which they respond to that agenda. After all,

the first question to ask in arriving at policy conclusions is

what do we take for granted and what is it we wish to change. Are

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there underlying assumptions that American Jews take for granted

and that if we make explicit might help us find the best answers?

The question why we should affirm a Jewish identity turns on

the question of what if anything is distinctive about Judaism, or

what distinguishes us from non-Jews. This question arises in

particular historical circumstances. I know of no compelling

answer. By that I mean that I as far as I know, societies in

which this question really troubled Jews, in which it was an

existential rather than a political question, never succeeded in

providing answers which more than a handful of Jews found

convincing. The modern responses to the question of the

distinctive nature of Judaism were formulated in central and

western Europe in the 19th and early 20th century. The very

question, by the way, was derided by Jews of Eastern Europe.

Answers included: God's special revelation to the Jews, the

antiquity of Jewish culture, the superiority of Jewish culture

and morality, the mission of the Jews, and the obligation of the
present generation to continue the task of those who died to

sanctify Judaism or who were slaughtered because they were Jews.

All but the last response are reflected, at least in part, in the

remarks we just heard. They will convince a minority of Jews who

are predisposed to finding an answer which justifies their

continuing Jewish commitments. But like the rationale for

performing mitzvot, they only carry conviction to those who want

to perform mitzvot. Oddly enough, Rosenzweigian Judaism, the

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philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, which in one form or another

underlies most of the replies, overlooks one of Rosenzweig's most

significant insights -- all of these answers are no more than

poor substitutes for a Judaism (whatever specific ideology or

world-view it may bear), which arises out of a Jewish reality --

a Jewish neighborhood, a Jewish market-place, a life dictated by

Jewish rhythms, by a Jewish given. Unless Jewishness is taken for

granted, Judaism, by which I mean an ideology or belief system or

normative system rooted in the life Jews live, makes little sense

to more than a handful of individuals.

This, therefore, forgive me if you've heard it so often, is

the real difference between Judaism and Jewish identity in Israel

and the golah. This has nothing to do with Zionism. I'm a

territorialist at heart. Stuart Eisenstadt probably thinks of

himself as a Zionist. He should live and be healthy. He may be a

Zionist but he misses the point of Judaism. Jewish life in Israel

is more Jewishly authentic than life in the United States. This

is not because Israelis have better answers to the question of

what constitutes Judaism. Personally I don't like the Israeli

brands of Judaism, least of all the intolerant, chauvanist,

xenophobic brand of Orthodox Judaism one finds here. But Judaism,

at its very core, whether you believe it is a religious, or

ethnic, or national, or political or cultural system was always

conceived as rooted in a total not a partial community of Jews in

which one's Jewishness was indistinguishable from one's

humanness. That is why Diaspora Judaism today is necessarily less

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authentic than Israeli Judaism. The Babylon-Israel analogy is

simply absurd because no diaspora, including the United States,

is Babylon. The analogy might have once been drawn for Warsaw,

or Odessa or Vilna -- not of White Plains, Highland Park or

Beverly Hills.

I do take it for granted that most Diaspora Jews, even those

of Easter Europe, will not move to Israel. I even take it for

granted that those who remain in the Diaspora will not congregate

in Jewish neighborhoods, no matter how convincing arguments on

behalf of the correlation between Jewish density and Jewish

identity may sound. For better or worse I accept these facts as

givens. This is what leads me to suggest that the question of

highest priority is not what kind of Judaism will appeal to

Diaspora Jews in general and American Jews in particular, but how

can we construct functional equivalents to Jewish neighborhoods,

to the experience of total Jewish lives which will allow the

answers of Laura Geller, or Abner Weiss or even, God help me

Michael Lerner to resonate for large numbers of Jews. How do we

create a Jewish environment in which American Jews or British

Jews or French Jews or Russian Jews will feel compelled to search

for one or more of the answers which our respondents have

suggested. How do we create an environment which forces Jews to

seek for the meaning of Judaism? The problem isn't that we lack

for answers or don't have the right answer, the problem is that

not many Jews are asking the question. This is an appropriate

point to mention Orthodox Judaism before I dispense with it.

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 The recent National Jewish Population Study confirms what

most of us probably suspected. Professor Seymour Martin Lipset

whom we just heard, says it explicitely in a recent paper

analyzing that survey. The Orthodox are more successful than any

other group in transmitting Jewish committment. If one wants to

maximize the chances that one's child will not intermarry, will

receive a good Jewish education and will remain Jewishly

identified, then raise the child as an Orthodox Jew. It is worth

reminding ourselves that despite this fact, Orthodox Judaism is

not succeeding in holding its own, but this may be the result of

a statistical blip. Orthodoxy still does better than anybody

else. I attribute this to its ability to create an environment

akin to if not equivalent to a total Jewish life. Orthodoxy

projects in the minds of its adherents, the image of total Jewish

life. But I also accept as a given that most American Jews are

not going to become Orthodox even if they are convinced that

statistically this maximizes their chances of Jewish survival.

That argument won't work any better than the argument that
intermarriage results in more divorces than in-marriage does to

prevent intermarriage. Perhaps, however, we can look to the

Orthodox for some answers. But in another respect, this is a kind

of trap. The Orthodox formula for survival, is not easily

unravelled. In other words, I'm not sure you can buy one part of

the formula without buying all of it. Looking at the other side

of the coin, I'm not sure that Orthodoxy is doing justice to

itself in trying to sell a part of its formula as Rabbi Abner

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Weiss attempts. I cannot fault Orthodox leaders who counsel

isolation from the remainder of Diaspora Jews. They may be

correct that contact with the former will jeopardize their own

Jewish survival.

Diaspora Jews, I have said, must find a way to create at

least a taste of, an image of a total Jewish experience without

living in Israel, without even living in Jewish neighborhoods,

and without becoming Orthodox. What other alternatives exist? The

Hebrew language is one of them. I think that knowledge and even

partial use of a language is critical in developing a natural

sense of community, in separating and distinguishing one group

from another. Are we to also accept as a given that Diaspora Jews

or at least American Jews can never learn Hebrew? At what point

are we to going to stop trying to make being Jewish so easy? How

deeply must Jewish life be eroded before we appreciate that

precisely because we don't live in Israel, being Jewish means

making sacrifices in order to recreate an imagined if not a real

community. Language does not insure success, neither does being

Orthodox. But it gives Jewish continuity a running start. Of

course we need Jewish day schools, Jewish camps, and extended

visits to Israel as well. Why? Because what they all have in

common is that they point to the possibility of full Jewish

lives. If we Diaspora Jews cannot live our lives according to

Jewish rhythms we can at least, through Hebrew, through day-

schools, summer camps, and trips to Israel, taste or find hints

of such possibilities. I remind you of what it is that impresses

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so many American Jewish youngsters on their trips to Israel. What

souvenirs do they bring back with them? What are the symbols they

seek to preserve? Ask their guides and counsellors, both Israeli

and American. I am told that the most popular items are Israeli

beer cans, Coca Cola bottles with Hebrew lettering, and lettered

T Shirts. What does this tell us? It tells us that youngsters

are seeking physical evidence that Jewish life exists in a

secular, every day, realm of life --that it is not isolated,

however special and sanctified that isolation may be.

I don't mean to suggest that schools or camps or trip to

Israel or Hebrew are the only answers. I am trying to suggest

that the place to look for answers is in the effort to create a

Jewish environment in which the question of the the essence or

nature of Judaism is a compelling one for large numbers of Jews.

The answers are then secondary.

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 I have suggested that we can only develop compelling

responses to questions about the nature of Judaism and the

essence of Jewish identity if we can replicate, however weakly,

an experience of Jewish living. In the effort to construct such

a Judaism, mixed marriages, by which I mean marriages between a

Jew and a non-Jew who chooses to remain a non-Jew and not to

convert, is a cardinal, probably the cardinal Jewish sin. I

needn't remind you that the vast majority of intermarriages today

are mixed marriages. When I label it a sin I don't mean that it

is a sin against God. In fact it is a questionable infraction of

Jewish law. But it is a major obstacle to Jewish continuity.

Outreach to the mixed married, which is a real issue in American

Jewish life today, condones the sin, at least by implication. It

suggests that one can affirm Judaism despite the fact that the

basic building bloc of the Jewish community, the family and home,

is not entirely Jewish. Outreach to the mixed married undermines

the ground upon which Judaism today, in the Diaspora, in the

United States in particular, needs to take its stand. Through a

mixed marriage we are more than likely to lose one member of the

community; outreach undermines the community itself by eroding

its foundation as life lived among Jews. In this respect

therefore, the polar positions represented by Rabbi Laura Geller

and intimated in the remarks of Chancellor Ismar Schorsh raise no

problem for me. I stand squarely with Schorsh's response about

the need to concentrate our efforts on the minority, the cadre of

Jews, rather than upon all those who are in some way identifiable

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by survey researchers as members of Jewish households.

Outreach is especially disastrous in the United States which

affirms what I find to be a strange notion of pluralism. American

pluralism has come to be defined as not only the right of every

group or every individual to live his private life in accordance

with his or her conscience, I hope we all agree to that, but the

assertion that one way of life is no better or no worse than any

other, that all forms of religious expression, for example, are

equally valid and therefore no group has the right to impose its

religious standards on any of its members. This is a position

which ultimately undermines the very existence of a group. But

its immediate implications, for example, are that Jewish

community centers or even synagogues which seek to reach out to

mixed marrieds, ought not even preach the superiority of Judaism

over Christianity. This, as many of you know has happened in some

outreach groups. But perhaps reports in the Anglo-Jewish press

are exaggerated or refer to idiosyncratic examples. In less

extreme form, in a pluralistic society such as that of the United

States -- where ideas are confused with personal values, and

where self-fulfillment and living in accordance with one's own

values is sanctified -- outreach necessarily means meeting the

mixed married couple, including the non-Jewish partner at least

half way. It necessarily means representing Judaism in a manner

that the non-Jew not only finds credible but personally

acceptable. It means, in other words, either compromising basic

Jewish principles or distorting the message of Judaism. It is

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incompatible with creating a Jewish environment.

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