American Jewry: The View from Israel, 5748
Daniel J. Elazar
Whether viewed from close or from afar, American Jewry, like the
United States itself, is a bundle of contradictions. But, unlike
the Marxist meaning of that phrase which suggests that the
contradictions must be resolved if life is to go on, Americans
and American Jews seem to be indefinitely capable of living with
the strangest contradictions.
In my encounters with American Jewry over the past year, I
have found members of Orthodox synagogues who believe that
Orthodoxy is the only way to be Jewish but who not only continue
their touring of foreign parts on Rosh Hashanah, but do not even
know that it is Rosh Hashanah. I have followed events at one
rabbinical seminary where the year began with an official
congratulations to a young couple given birth to their first son
-- a couple of lesbian graduates who used artificial
insemination. It continued with another graduate leaving his
wife and children for a sex change operation, and concluded with
one of the institution's students brought before a disciplinary
committee on charges of worshipping idols in her room. I learned
of a member of a Brooklyn Hassidic community who earns his living
as a juvenile worker, who enters a subway station every day in
his black uniform, changes into his working costume, the garb of
the New York City streets including a long-haired wig (which
keeps his head covered as a good Jew should) and on his way home
every evening changes back into his regular clothes.
Of course there are the usual statistics and examples of
intermarriage, Jews for Jesus, and cult but there is also the
productivity of the over 1,000 scholars of Jewish studies holding
appointments at American universities. There is the revival of
the Hebrew colleges in Baltimore, Philadelphia and perhaps in
Boston, that had long since been defined as obsolete and given up
for dead, and the death of Dropsie University as it was
transformed into the Annenberg Center for Advanced Study whose
purpose is yet to unfold. There was the 40th anniversary reunion
of Camp Ramah in Wisconsin, the first of the Ramah camps, for
which 250 people paid $300 a couple for a Shabbaton at a posh
hotel near Chicago's O'Hare Airport and 400 more joined them for
the party Saturday night, including 10 of the 90 original campers
of 1947.
There was the American Jewish reaction to the Pollard case,
blown all out of proportion by American Jews in the media and the
community leadership making clear how awful they thought it was,
looking at Israel as if it were American Jewry's faithful dog
that had just soiled the rug and asking "how could you do this to
us?" It was the embarrassing spectacle of Jewish leaders falling
over their feet to be photographed with the Pope in the Vatican
and getting little in return, a very successful exercise in
publicity, but one rather short on statesmanship. It was Jacob
Neusner ranting against his usual enemies and some new targets as
well and being given inordinate attention, especially by the
non-Jewish world as a result, and Athur Herzberg remaining the
fair-haired Jewish boy of the Times Op-Ed page.
I saw struggles in certain Conservative synagogues between
havurot trying to breathe a new spirit into a tired ritual and
rabbis afraid that they would and thereby undercut the centrality
of the pulpit. On another level, there are the power struggles
between UJA, UIA and CJF at a time when the total dollar among of
the contributions to the Federation/UJA campaigns have
essentially plateaued and continue to decline in real value. All
the established institutions feel threatened by the Simon
Weisenthal Center and AIPAC, the two Jewish fundraising phenomena
of the decade, that capitalize on the appeal of Jewish survival,
which Jewish education remains a poor cousin and tuitions to
Jewish schools continue to rise, making the cost of living
Jewishly ever higher.
These are only a few of the contradictions that I encountered
as I wandered across the American Jewish scene over the past
year. To me, they and others add up to a great deal of momentum
and a community which survives and even thrives on that momentum.
Again, like America itself, were American Jewry to become static,
the weight of its weaknesses and deficiencies would drag it down
and the "gevalt" predictions over its demise would be on target.
But as long as there is momentum in positive direction, American
Jewry remains lively, bubbling and creative, even as it is
assimilationist, non-observant, Jewishly ignorant and more than
occasionally vulgar.
It is well to remember in this year of the bicentennial of
the Constitution of the United States that 200 years ago the
Americans, following Newtonian physics, sought to build a social
perpetual motion machine that would keep the country in orbit
even through it was populated by imperfect people in an imperfect
world. American Jewry, which for the most part has abandoned
halakhah as a vehicle for Jewish continuity, seems to have
implicitly adopted perpetual motion as its method for remaining
in orbit. It is a fascinating experiment, fascinating to watch
from afar,and fascinating to be part of -- and almost impossible
to convey to Israelis or Jews from other lands.
