(Originally published in the New York Jewish Week)
If all had gone according to plan, phones would be ringing in homes across the U.S. to select 5,000 presumed Jewish households for the year 2000 National Jewish Population Survey. For these chosen people, hopefully representative of the other six million or so American Jews, there would be an intensive follow-up barrage of questions about Jewish involvement and other matters of interest to demographers.
As we know, NJPS 2000 has been delayed, in part because it is the victim of a nasty fight within the small unfriendly fraternity of statisticians who fancy themselves experts on Jewish communal life. Although vast resources of time and money have already been expended, critics have at least temporarily undermined a much-heralded project that promised to reveal the state of American Jewry at the dawn of the new century and millennium. We will have to wait a bit longer to learn whether the doleful news conveyed by NJPS 1990 has been confirmed a decade later.
Despite heady and inaccurate assertions to the contrary, the 1990 findings were questioned early on, including by this writer. The central claim that the intermarriage rate had risen to 52 percent was challenged by Steve Cohen, primarily on the ground that second marriages and other sociological factors that tipped the data in the direction of a higher intermarriage rate should not have been included in the calculation. Now at Hebrew University, he continues to be a tough critic of NJPS, although when it suits his purposes he relies on the 1990 data.
In a Jan. 10 communication to an overseas foundation, Cohen conveyed statistics derived from NJPS 1990 that purport to show a remarkable rate of abandonment of Orthodoxy. One of the widely acknowledged flaws of the 1990 study is its significant undercounting of the Orthodox. Perhaps more to the point, the 1990 data did not distinguish — perhaps it could not — between persons who were raised in homes that were Orthodox only by affiliation and homes where halacha was the norm.
The over-reliance by NJPS on persons whose expertise is factor analysis, probabilities and other statistical arcana has limited the reliability of the project. There are scholars whose forte is understanding the social forces that impel contemporary Jewish life and who are not immersed in numbers games. They have been essentially excluded from the technical committee that has a key role in developing and interpreting NJPS. Apparently, in Jewish circles, thinkers do not count.
Still, a sincere effort has been made by Jim Schwartz, NJPS 2000 director, to solicit suggestions from many sources regarding the questions to be included in this year’s survey. Attention is also being paid to a comprehensive follow-up analysis of the data. In both respects, these are improvements over NJPS 1990, when there was a rush to publish and publicize a highlights document that, with great fanfare, announced the 50-plus percent intermarriage rate. The bulk of the 1990s findings have been the victim of benign neglect.
Even with the best people and the best intentions, NJPS cannot escape methodological pitfalls that undermine its reliability. American Jews are dispersed in hundreds of communities across nearly four million square miles. The survey is intended to determine, among much else, how many Jews there are in these many places. But in order to determine the distribution of telephone calls — how many in Brooklyn or Orange County, Calif., or Broward County, Fla., etc. — it is necessary to know with some precision in advance of the survey how American Jewry is distributed geographically. The upshot is that NJPS consists of much guesswork and extrapolations.
For all of the hoopla accompanying NJPS, it is, at best, an approximation of the contemporary Jewish reality.
What emerges from the survey has some reliability, although the product is compromised by the necessary use of the telephone as the means for collecting data. At bottom, NJPS is a form of telemarketing, a species of social interaction that is widely regarded as repugnant and shunned in many homes. While a relatively short list of questions has been prepared for the tens of thousands of households, 99 percent of them not Jewish, which will be called initially, it will be followed by a large questionnaire directed at the 5,000 households that presumably contain at least one Jew.
The hope is that the second round of questions can be completed in about 30 minutes. This would require that the draft questionnaire be reduced considerably and even then it would be a stretch to get the job done in a half-hour.
It’s even a greater stretch to believe that there will be many respondents willing to undergo this kind of intrusive telephone interrogation.
On the substantive side, there is the inescapable issue of whom to count as Jewish. Putting aside patrilineality, non-halachic conversions and other contentious issues that frame the “Who is a Jew?” debate, it remains that a large and constantly growing number of persons in what is loosely termed a Jewish household are not Jewish by anyone’s definition. These include non-Jewish spouses in mixed marriages and most of the children of such marriages who are not being raised as Jews. When the intermarriage rate is calculated by including persons in a Jewish household who do not regard themselves as Jewish, it obviously is significantly higher than it would be if the rate were based only on the behavior of core Jews.
This point is critical to the conflict over NJPS 2000 and it forms the basis for the argument that the true intermarriage rate is probably 35-40 percent.
There is much that is murky about our population statistics, a situation that will worsen as Judaic abandonment takes an escalating toll on Jewish identity. We ought to recognize that no matter how careful and objective NJPS may be, the notion of a fully accurate demographic picture is a pipe dream. NJPS is at most a partially reliable profile and exaggerated claims on its behalf are just that.
Rather than trying to resolve the irresolvable, NJPS should proceed. Its data should be made immediately available to diverse camps who can then interpret the numbers as they see fit. We should eschew any single approach. Ultimately, the story will be sorted out and we will learn what happened to American Jewry as the 20th century was winding down. In the meantime, let our community go about the far more important business of salvaging what we can.
Friday, February 04, 2000
Friday, December 31, 1999
Holocaust Reparations
(This satire was originally published in the New York Jewish Week in December 1998)
What’s all the fuss about Holocaust money going to our organizations and not to the survivors and their families? That’s the way it has been for the longest time in American Jewish life and there is no reason to change a formula that has resulted in the steady growth of our establishment.
Anyway, the Holocaust ended fifty-three years ago and, as the Swiss were saying until recently, there are few survivors and those who remain among the living cannot prove their claims. The real Jewish survivors are our organizations which, although they stopped functioning years ago, continue to be in business.
As for the Jewish needy who lived through the destruction of European Jewry, they can collect welfare, Medicare, food stamps, Section 8 and a slew of other government benefits. If that’s not enough, they can shnor in shul or from relatives. Besides, they’ll soon be getting $500 each from the humanitarian fund that Jewish groups have set up with other people’s money. This should keep them quiet for quite a while.
We should be more concerned about the dozens of major Jewish organizations which each day are on the firing line doing battle to raise money and get some scraps of publicity. It’s hard work to get a press release published once a year in the New York Times and it’s hard and degrading to get the very rich to part with some of their wealth in return for a meaningless dedication or insincere sycophancy.
Jewish organizations have a profound respect for the dead and they show it at a cost of millions of dollars each year when they give their departed machers a deserved final resting place on the obituary page of the Times. Isn’t it more appropriate to spend money on this cause than to enrich Holocaust survivors who for a half a century have been able to recount their wartime experiences?
We have learned from survey research, another expensive habit of our establishment, that two-thirds of American Jewish Holocaust survivors have been to Miami Beach at least three times and most have done well financially, while raising their children to be good Americans.
Thanks to our trailblazing organizations, while their parents still speak with an accent, the children have warmly embraced the great American Jewish imperative of assimilation. It took the European Jews who came here between 1880 and 1914 three generations to accomplish what the children of so many Holocaust survivors have achieved in one generation. We ought to show gratitude for the groups that have demonstrated that you can be a good Jew without being Jewish.
Jewish leaders have struggled for years to stay in business, enduring the slings and arrows of those who say that they and their agencies are not needed. Why can’t we understand that it has not been easy to go to all of those conferences and conventions, to eat at so many dinners, to sit at boring meetings and to listen to inconsequential speeches?
The recent General Assembly in Jerusalem gave proof of the sacrifice of American Jewish leaders. Three thousand made the trip – just a small proportion of our apparently inexhaustible supply of machers – and most were forced to travel economy class. There were fat cats and back-home big shots who had to squeeze into narrow seats because there weren’t enough business class seats and too many were occupied by the nouveau riche Israelis. Worse still, they endured long days of long speeches and streams of cliche. Some speakers had the temerity to give their talks in Hebrew, a strange language for American Jewish leaders. Machers who are accustomed to sit front and center on the dais were forced to sit hundreds of feet away. On the trip home, one was heard to mutter, “This is like being in a cattle car.”
As for those who were in the cattle cars, they aren’t showing any appreciation. Instead of accepting what their superiors are offering, they have become greedy as they grasp for the spoils resulting from the slave labor of class action lawyers. Some are demanding an accounting of the past fifty years of reparation and restitution money. There are accusations that German Jewish property was stolen by the Nazis has been denied to their rightful Jewish owners because our restitution contortionists have constructed an elaborate bureaucratic maze that makes it impossible for Jews to get what is theirs. It’s wonderful that this disgusting charge has been ignored by the American Jewish media and only the Jerusalem Report, which no one reads anymore, has picked up the story.
Some of the worst noise is coming from Williamsburg Chasidim, people who think that just because they are Holocaust survivors they have the right to sit at the same table with the machers and decide what to do with the Swiss money. They do not even speak English and with their old world dress and folkways, they are an embarrassment. Who cares whether their families suffered in Auschwitz and Treblinka? For decades they have been aloof from the establishment and the old boys’ network that controls Holocaust funds. Now they are greedy, like Chasidim always are.
Let them be represented by clean-shaven Orthodox Jews who are always willing to make a deal giving the establishment what it wants, so long as they get their cut. Some Jewish leaders are fed up with all the criticism, saying that whoever does not like the way business has been conducted in American Jewish life since Haym Solomon’s time can go back from whence he came. Thankfully, cooler heads are prevailing. They know that it’s best to ignore the pesky noise-makers. They might cause some trouble and get a bit of attention but soon enough it will all pass.
At the end of the day, our organizations will get their money and their way. That’s the way it has always been.
Soon enough, there won’t be any Holocaust survivors.
What’s all the fuss about Holocaust money going to our organizations and not to the survivors and their families? That’s the way it has been for the longest time in American Jewish life and there is no reason to change a formula that has resulted in the steady growth of our establishment.
Anyway, the Holocaust ended fifty-three years ago and, as the Swiss were saying until recently, there are few survivors and those who remain among the living cannot prove their claims. The real Jewish survivors are our organizations which, although they stopped functioning years ago, continue to be in business.
As for the Jewish needy who lived through the destruction of European Jewry, they can collect welfare, Medicare, food stamps, Section 8 and a slew of other government benefits. If that’s not enough, they can shnor in shul or from relatives. Besides, they’ll soon be getting $500 each from the humanitarian fund that Jewish groups have set up with other people’s money. This should keep them quiet for quite a while.
We should be more concerned about the dozens of major Jewish organizations which each day are on the firing line doing battle to raise money and get some scraps of publicity. It’s hard work to get a press release published once a year in the New York Times and it’s hard and degrading to get the very rich to part with some of their wealth in return for a meaningless dedication or insincere sycophancy.
Jewish organizations have a profound respect for the dead and they show it at a cost of millions of dollars each year when they give their departed machers a deserved final resting place on the obituary page of the Times. Isn’t it more appropriate to spend money on this cause than to enrich Holocaust survivors who for a half a century have been able to recount their wartime experiences?
We have learned from survey research, another expensive habit of our establishment, that two-thirds of American Jewish Holocaust survivors have been to Miami Beach at least three times and most have done well financially, while raising their children to be good Americans.
Thanks to our trailblazing organizations, while their parents still speak with an accent, the children have warmly embraced the great American Jewish imperative of assimilation. It took the European Jews who came here between 1880 and 1914 three generations to accomplish what the children of so many Holocaust survivors have achieved in one generation. We ought to show gratitude for the groups that have demonstrated that you can be a good Jew without being Jewish.
Jewish leaders have struggled for years to stay in business, enduring the slings and arrows of those who say that they and their agencies are not needed. Why can’t we understand that it has not been easy to go to all of those conferences and conventions, to eat at so many dinners, to sit at boring meetings and to listen to inconsequential speeches?
The recent General Assembly in Jerusalem gave proof of the sacrifice of American Jewish leaders. Three thousand made the trip – just a small proportion of our apparently inexhaustible supply of machers – and most were forced to travel economy class. There were fat cats and back-home big shots who had to squeeze into narrow seats because there weren’t enough business class seats and too many were occupied by the nouveau riche Israelis. Worse still, they endured long days of long speeches and streams of cliche. Some speakers had the temerity to give their talks in Hebrew, a strange language for American Jewish leaders. Machers who are accustomed to sit front and center on the dais were forced to sit hundreds of feet away. On the trip home, one was heard to mutter, “This is like being in a cattle car.”
As for those who were in the cattle cars, they aren’t showing any appreciation. Instead of accepting what their superiors are offering, they have become greedy as they grasp for the spoils resulting from the slave labor of class action lawyers. Some are demanding an accounting of the past fifty years of reparation and restitution money. There are accusations that German Jewish property was stolen by the Nazis has been denied to their rightful Jewish owners because our restitution contortionists have constructed an elaborate bureaucratic maze that makes it impossible for Jews to get what is theirs. It’s wonderful that this disgusting charge has been ignored by the American Jewish media and only the Jerusalem Report, which no one reads anymore, has picked up the story.
Some of the worst noise is coming from Williamsburg Chasidim, people who think that just because they are Holocaust survivors they have the right to sit at the same table with the machers and decide what to do with the Swiss money. They do not even speak English and with their old world dress and folkways, they are an embarrassment. Who cares whether their families suffered in Auschwitz and Treblinka? For decades they have been aloof from the establishment and the old boys’ network that controls Holocaust funds. Now they are greedy, like Chasidim always are.
Let them be represented by clean-shaven Orthodox Jews who are always willing to make a deal giving the establishment what it wants, so long as they get their cut. Some Jewish leaders are fed up with all the criticism, saying that whoever does not like the way business has been conducted in American Jewish life since Haym Solomon’s time can go back from whence he came. Thankfully, cooler heads are prevailing. They know that it’s best to ignore the pesky noise-makers. They might cause some trouble and get a bit of attention but soon enough it will all pass.
At the end of the day, our organizations will get their money and their way. That’s the way it has always been.
Soon enough, there won’t be any Holocaust survivors.
Friday, December 24, 1999
Defining Judaism Downward
(Originally published in the New York Jewish Week)
A new form of Christian-Jewish comity has arisen, not as the agenda of any organization but from powerful social realities that are certain to be transient, yet which are alive in contemporary Jewish life.
American Jewry is in a post-assimilation stage in which the massive, ceaseless Judaic abandonment of the past two or three generations has been incorporated into our communal and personal lives. Organized American Jewry continues to send a message imploring Jews to become more committed, even more traditional. Activities aimed at promoting this goal receive significant funding. From the look of things, there is progress, as when the Reform movement embraces greater religiosity. There are homes where Judaism is more vibrant today.
Still, the far larger picture in terms of numbers is one of irreversible loss, along with the acceptance of this loss by defining Judaism downward. In the process, a new reality has been established at the family and personal level in relationships between Christians and Jews.
If the petty warfare abates among the statisticians who are called demographers, we should be told within a year whether the intermarriage rate has changed since the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey. The news will be interesting, perhaps important, and much will be made of it. It will beget articles and reports, conferences and task forces, and projects galore. In the end, though, it will be mainly a sideshow.
The big news in American Jewish life no longer is intermarriage or Jewish loss. They are yesterday’s story, although they have a great bearing on today’s reality. Today’s new story is how in the face of what seems to be massive Jewish loss, American Jewry is attempting to reinvent itself as a secularized ethnic group — essentially as a membership group — in which our religious practices and beliefs are artifacts and options, but not imperatives.
By the hundreds of thousands or more, American Jews are saying that it is for them to choose how they will act as Jews. Attention may be paid to history and to tradition, but we owe the past nothing. We are not obligated to follow the ways of our grandparents or, for that matter, our parents. Nor should we fret much about posterity, since after all, our offspring deserve to have the same freedom as we claim for ourselves.
In this Reconstructionist vision (not the movement) of Jewish life, the door is wide open for experimentation and change, including the erosion of barriers between Jew and Christian. In the amalgam that is evolving among post-assimilation Jews, what separates one religion from the other is articulated in arrangements that allow for closer personal religious interrelationships than anything that was visualized by the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
This development is the inevitable consequence of intermarriage and the corollary living patterns that have become standard in many American Jewish households. It has been apparent for a generation that a steadily growing number of those living in what loosely is called a Jewish household are people who are not Jewish, not by birth or choice or any other definition. They number today well above 1 million and they are, in the main, Christians by birth and, to a lesser extent, the children of intermarried couples. If these non-Jews are not practicing Christians, they identify in some fashion as being Christian, whether because they adhere to symbols that identify them as such or because of family ties with practicing Christians.
It will take a decade or two to have a fuller appreciation of the religious and social outcomes of mixed marriages, but what can already be appreciated is the weakening of attitudinal and behavioral features that separate Christian from Jew.
While Jews who intermarry used to withdraw completely from Jewish life, there is now an expanding tendency to straddle the two religions. There are intermarried Jews who have heeded the part of the continuity message that urges American Jews to identify as Jews. Their ability to do this in the face of intermarriage has been made possible by the attenuation of religion in Jewish life and by the growing receptivity of Christians toward Jews.
Among Americans generally, Jews are a greatly admired people, respected for their intelligence, industry and contributions to the arts and sciences and to society. This makes it easier for Christian spouses in intermarriage situations — and their nuclear families as well — to be receptive to some maintenance of Jewish identity by the Jewish spouse. This receptivity is in line with the religious tolerance and pluralism that is critical in the outlook of liberal Christian groups.
At one level, this development is reflected in two-religion families, in the effort to accommodate both religions — their major holidays and some element of observance. It is facilitated, as well, by marital arrangements that allow each spouse to go his or her separate way and for the children to decide as they approach adulthood how they may want to identify religiously. Interestingly, Jewish demographic surveys are beginning to ask respondents about church attendance and other outside religious experiences.
It is likely that we are still early in the process of creating hybrid religious experiences. As American Jewry becomes more secular and also more heedful of the pleas to stay in the fold, the new kinds of arrangement are likely to expand.
This is the Jewish social reality at the end of the century. It is a remarkable story. Under conditions that are now present in Jewish life, this development will carry well into the next century. As a social reality it cannot be ignored, no matter what reservations any of us may have. Indeed, what is at present mainly the personal experience of many Jews is likely to be incorporated into the outlook at activities of organized American Jewry.
From a religious standpoint, it is an arrangement that cannot last more than two generations. Jewish survival cannot be based on intermarriage or advanced assimilation, or on a hybrid religion that eliminates our distinctiveness.
A new form of Christian-Jewish comity has arisen, not as the agenda of any organization but from powerful social realities that are certain to be transient, yet which are alive in contemporary Jewish life.
American Jewry is in a post-assimilation stage in which the massive, ceaseless Judaic abandonment of the past two or three generations has been incorporated into our communal and personal lives. Organized American Jewry continues to send a message imploring Jews to become more committed, even more traditional. Activities aimed at promoting this goal receive significant funding. From the look of things, there is progress, as when the Reform movement embraces greater religiosity. There are homes where Judaism is more vibrant today.
Still, the far larger picture in terms of numbers is one of irreversible loss, along with the acceptance of this loss by defining Judaism downward. In the process, a new reality has been established at the family and personal level in relationships between Christians and Jews.
If the petty warfare abates among the statisticians who are called demographers, we should be told within a year whether the intermarriage rate has changed since the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey. The news will be interesting, perhaps important, and much will be made of it. It will beget articles and reports, conferences and task forces, and projects galore. In the end, though, it will be mainly a sideshow.
The big news in American Jewish life no longer is intermarriage or Jewish loss. They are yesterday’s story, although they have a great bearing on today’s reality. Today’s new story is how in the face of what seems to be massive Jewish loss, American Jewry is attempting to reinvent itself as a secularized ethnic group — essentially as a membership group — in which our religious practices and beliefs are artifacts and options, but not imperatives.
By the hundreds of thousands or more, American Jews are saying that it is for them to choose how they will act as Jews. Attention may be paid to history and to tradition, but we owe the past nothing. We are not obligated to follow the ways of our grandparents or, for that matter, our parents. Nor should we fret much about posterity, since after all, our offspring deserve to have the same freedom as we claim for ourselves.
In this Reconstructionist vision (not the movement) of Jewish life, the door is wide open for experimentation and change, including the erosion of barriers between Jew and Christian. In the amalgam that is evolving among post-assimilation Jews, what separates one religion from the other is articulated in arrangements that allow for closer personal religious interrelationships than anything that was visualized by the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
This development is the inevitable consequence of intermarriage and the corollary living patterns that have become standard in many American Jewish households. It has been apparent for a generation that a steadily growing number of those living in what loosely is called a Jewish household are people who are not Jewish, not by birth or choice or any other definition. They number today well above 1 million and they are, in the main, Christians by birth and, to a lesser extent, the children of intermarried couples. If these non-Jews are not practicing Christians, they identify in some fashion as being Christian, whether because they adhere to symbols that identify them as such or because of family ties with practicing Christians.
It will take a decade or two to have a fuller appreciation of the religious and social outcomes of mixed marriages, but what can already be appreciated is the weakening of attitudinal and behavioral features that separate Christian from Jew.
While Jews who intermarry used to withdraw completely from Jewish life, there is now an expanding tendency to straddle the two religions. There are intermarried Jews who have heeded the part of the continuity message that urges American Jews to identify as Jews. Their ability to do this in the face of intermarriage has been made possible by the attenuation of religion in Jewish life and by the growing receptivity of Christians toward Jews.
Among Americans generally, Jews are a greatly admired people, respected for their intelligence, industry and contributions to the arts and sciences and to society. This makes it easier for Christian spouses in intermarriage situations — and their nuclear families as well — to be receptive to some maintenance of Jewish identity by the Jewish spouse. This receptivity is in line with the religious tolerance and pluralism that is critical in the outlook of liberal Christian groups.
At one level, this development is reflected in two-religion families, in the effort to accommodate both religions — their major holidays and some element of observance. It is facilitated, as well, by marital arrangements that allow each spouse to go his or her separate way and for the children to decide as they approach adulthood how they may want to identify religiously. Interestingly, Jewish demographic surveys are beginning to ask respondents about church attendance and other outside religious experiences.
It is likely that we are still early in the process of creating hybrid religious experiences. As American Jewry becomes more secular and also more heedful of the pleas to stay in the fold, the new kinds of arrangement are likely to expand.
This is the Jewish social reality at the end of the century. It is a remarkable story. Under conditions that are now present in Jewish life, this development will carry well into the next century. As a social reality it cannot be ignored, no matter what reservations any of us may have. Indeed, what is at present mainly the personal experience of many Jews is likely to be incorporated into the outlook at activities of organized American Jewry.
From a religious standpoint, it is an arrangement that cannot last more than two generations. Jewish survival cannot be based on intermarriage or advanced assimilation, or on a hybrid religion that eliminates our distinctiveness.
Wednesday, December 01, 1999
Christians and Jews
We no longer hear about the National Conference of Christians and Jews and so it’s hard to say whether they are still in business, although when it was alive for sure, it was scarcely breathing. The group’s agenda touched the lives of few Christians or Jews, while the refrain of a Judeo-Christian tradition that was central in the development of Western thought was high-sounding rhetoric belied by the Holocaust. For all of its truly good intentions, the organization served as a mausoleum for an idea. While no one could inveigh against what was being preached, few people embraced it as a central theme of their lives.
A new form of Christian-Jewish comity has arisen, not as the agenda of any organization but out of powerful social realities that are certain to be transient, yet which are alive in contemporry Jewish life.
American Jewry is in a post-assimilation stage in which the massive, ceaseless Judaic abandonment of the past two or three generations has been incorporated into our communal and personal lives. Organized American Jewry continues to send a message imploring Jews to become more committed, even more traditional. Activities aimed at promoting this goal receive significant funding. From the look of things, there is progress, as when the Reform movement apparently embraces greater religiosity. There are homes where Judaism is more vibrant today.
Still, the far larger picture in terms of numbers is one of irreversible loss, along with the acceptance of this loss by defining Judaism downward. In the process, a new reality has been established at the family and personal level in relationships between Christians and Jews.
If the petty warfare among the statisticians who are called demographers abates, we should be told within a year whether the intermarriage rate has changed since the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey. The news will be interesting, perhaps important, and much will be made of it. It will beget articles and reports, conferences and task forces and projects galore. In the end, though, it will be mainly a sideshow.
The big news in American Jewish life no longer is intermarriage or Jewish loss. They are yesterday’s story, although they have a great bearing on today’s reality. Today’s new story is how in the face of what seems to be massive Jewish loss, American Jewry is attempting to reinvent itself as a secularized ethnic group – essentially, as a membership group – in which our religious practices and beliefs are artifacts and options, but not imperatives.
By the hundreds of thousands or more, American Jews are saying that it is for them to choose how they will act as Jews. Attention may be paid to history and to tradition, but we owe the past nothing. We are not obligated to follow the ways of our grandparents or, for that matter, our parents. Nor should we fret much about posterity, since, after all, our offspring deserve to have the same freedom as we claim for ourselves.
In this Reconstructionist vision of Jewish life, the door is wide open for experimentation and change, including the erosion of barriers between Jew and Christian. In the amalgam that is evolving among post-assimilation Jews, what separates one religion from the other is articulated in arrangements that allow for closer personal religious interrelationships than anything that was visualized by the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
This development is the inevitable consequence of intermarriage and the corollary living patterns that have become standard in many American Jewish households. It has been apparent for a generation that a steadily growing number of persons living in what loosely is called a Jewish household are people who are not Jewish, not by birth or choice or any other definition. They number today well above one-million and they are, in the main, Christians by birth and, to a lesser extent, the children of intermarried couples. If these non-Jews are not practicing Christians, they identify in some fashion as being Christian, whether because they adhere to symbols that identify them as such or because of family ties with practicing Christians.
The 1990 data indicated that a majority of children in Jewish homes were not being raised as Jews. It will take a decade or two to have a fuller appreciation of the religious and social outcomes of mixed marriages, but what can already be appreciated is the weakening of attitudinal and behavioral features that separate Christian from Jew.
While Jews who intermarry used to withdraw completely from Jewish life, there is now an expanding tendency to straddle the two religions. There are intermarried Jews who have heeded the part of the continuity message that urges American Jews to identify as Jews. Their ability to do this in the face of intermarriage has been made possible by the attenuation of religion in Jewish life and by the growing receptivity of Christians toward Jews.
Among Americans generally, Jews are a greatly admired people, respected for their intelligence, industry and contributions to the arts and sciences and to society. This makes it easier for Christian spouses in intermarriage situations – and their nuclear families as well – to be receptive to some maintenance of Jewish identity by the Jewish spouse. This receptivity is in line with the religious tolerance and pluralism that is critical in the outlook of liberal Christian groups.
At one level, this development is reflected in two-religion families, in the effort to accommodate both religious – their major holidays and some element of observance. It is facilitated, as well, by marital arrangements that allow each spouse to go his or her separate way and for the children to decide as they approach adulthood how they may want to identify religiously. Interestingly, Jewish demographic surveys are beginning to ask respondents about church attendance and other outside religious experiences.
It is likely that we are still early in the process of creating hybrid religious experiences. As American Jewry becomes more secular and also more heedful of the pleas to stay in the fold, the new kinds of arrangement are likely to expand.
This is the Jewish social reality at the end of the century. It is a remarkable story. Under the conditions that are now present in Jewish life, this development will carry well into the next century. As a social reality it cannot be ignored, no matter what reservations any of us may have. Indeed, what is at present mainly the personal experience of many Jews is likely to be incorporated into the outlook at activities of organized American Jewry.
From a religious standpoint, it is an arrangement that cannot last more than two generations. Jewish survival cannot be based on intermarriage or advanced assimilation or on a hybrid religion that eliminates our distinctiveness.
A new form of Christian-Jewish comity has arisen, not as the agenda of any organization but out of powerful social realities that are certain to be transient, yet which are alive in contemporry Jewish life.
American Jewry is in a post-assimilation stage in which the massive, ceaseless Judaic abandonment of the past two or three generations has been incorporated into our communal and personal lives. Organized American Jewry continues to send a message imploring Jews to become more committed, even more traditional. Activities aimed at promoting this goal receive significant funding. From the look of things, there is progress, as when the Reform movement apparently embraces greater religiosity. There are homes where Judaism is more vibrant today.
Still, the far larger picture in terms of numbers is one of irreversible loss, along with the acceptance of this loss by defining Judaism downward. In the process, a new reality has been established at the family and personal level in relationships between Christians and Jews.
If the petty warfare among the statisticians who are called demographers abates, we should be told within a year whether the intermarriage rate has changed since the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey. The news will be interesting, perhaps important, and much will be made of it. It will beget articles and reports, conferences and task forces and projects galore. In the end, though, it will be mainly a sideshow.
The big news in American Jewish life no longer is intermarriage or Jewish loss. They are yesterday’s story, although they have a great bearing on today’s reality. Today’s new story is how in the face of what seems to be massive Jewish loss, American Jewry is attempting to reinvent itself as a secularized ethnic group – essentially, as a membership group – in which our religious practices and beliefs are artifacts and options, but not imperatives.
By the hundreds of thousands or more, American Jews are saying that it is for them to choose how they will act as Jews. Attention may be paid to history and to tradition, but we owe the past nothing. We are not obligated to follow the ways of our grandparents or, for that matter, our parents. Nor should we fret much about posterity, since, after all, our offspring deserve to have the same freedom as we claim for ourselves.
In this Reconstructionist vision of Jewish life, the door is wide open for experimentation and change, including the erosion of barriers between Jew and Christian. In the amalgam that is evolving among post-assimilation Jews, what separates one religion from the other is articulated in arrangements that allow for closer personal religious interrelationships than anything that was visualized by the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
This development is the inevitable consequence of intermarriage and the corollary living patterns that have become standard in many American Jewish households. It has been apparent for a generation that a steadily growing number of persons living in what loosely is called a Jewish household are people who are not Jewish, not by birth or choice or any other definition. They number today well above one-million and they are, in the main, Christians by birth and, to a lesser extent, the children of intermarried couples. If these non-Jews are not practicing Christians, they identify in some fashion as being Christian, whether because they adhere to symbols that identify them as such or because of family ties with practicing Christians.
The 1990 data indicated that a majority of children in Jewish homes were not being raised as Jews. It will take a decade or two to have a fuller appreciation of the religious and social outcomes of mixed marriages, but what can already be appreciated is the weakening of attitudinal and behavioral features that separate Christian from Jew.
While Jews who intermarry used to withdraw completely from Jewish life, there is now an expanding tendency to straddle the two religions. There are intermarried Jews who have heeded the part of the continuity message that urges American Jews to identify as Jews. Their ability to do this in the face of intermarriage has been made possible by the attenuation of religion in Jewish life and by the growing receptivity of Christians toward Jews.
Among Americans generally, Jews are a greatly admired people, respected for their intelligence, industry and contributions to the arts and sciences and to society. This makes it easier for Christian spouses in intermarriage situations – and their nuclear families as well – to be receptive to some maintenance of Jewish identity by the Jewish spouse. This receptivity is in line with the religious tolerance and pluralism that is critical in the outlook of liberal Christian groups.
At one level, this development is reflected in two-religion families, in the effort to accommodate both religious – their major holidays and some element of observance. It is facilitated, as well, by marital arrangements that allow each spouse to go his or her separate way and for the children to decide as they approach adulthood how they may want to identify religiously. Interestingly, Jewish demographic surveys are beginning to ask respondents about church attendance and other outside religious experiences.
It is likely that we are still early in the process of creating hybrid religious experiences. As American Jewry becomes more secular and also more heedful of the pleas to stay in the fold, the new kinds of arrangement are likely to expand.
This is the Jewish social reality at the end of the century. It is a remarkable story. Under the conditions that are now present in Jewish life, this development will carry well into the next century. As a social reality it cannot be ignored, no matter what reservations any of us may have. Indeed, what is at present mainly the personal experience of many Jews is likely to be incorporated into the outlook at activities of organized American Jewry.
From a religious standpoint, it is an arrangement that cannot last more than two generations. Jewish survival cannot be based on intermarriage or advanced assimilation or on a hybrid religion that eliminates our distinctiveness.
Friday, November 12, 1999
The Flip Side Of The First Amendment
(Originally published in the New York Jewish Week)
The controversial exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum has given us an unwelcome lesson in the anti-religious tendencies that inform much of what is considered to be contemporary cultural life. In the great debate over the exhibit, the First Amendment rights of museums and artists have understandably been advanced, without sufficient attention being given to the corollary First Amendment strictures that mandate governmental neutrality in religious matters.
I am no fan of Mayor Giuliani, not by a long shot. True to form, he has been clumsy and bullying in his cancellation of a legal contract and in his threat to evict the museum from the architectural treasure that it has occupied and brought distinction to. He had an opportunity to articulate a principled position, to explain why government ought not to act in a hostile way toward religion. He could have taught by leadership, not by threatening, and he could have embraced an eloquence that places principle above narrow political gain. Instead of saying that the city would abide by a contract, despite the pain caused to a great number of New Yorkers, he took a path that guaranteed the seat in court.
I recognize that those who have suggested that some of the challenged art was not meant to be offensive to Catholics may be right. When we compare what is now in dispute with what has been displayed elsewhere, it may be that what has been called a “sensation” may primarily be an exploitative ploy aimed at attracting attention, attendance and financial support. Alas, the mayor could not resist taking the bait.
Giuliani has, however, raised a basic question that must not be obscured by any animus toward him or by one’s personal aesthetic. Why should the designation of something as art or literature or any form of expression result in its exemption from the constitutional ban on governmental action that advances or inhibits religion? It isn’t sufficient to argue that the First Amendment guarantees freedom of expression. Prayer is, after all, inherently a form of expression, yet I am certain that there is no First Amendment aficionado who contends that government can promote sectarian prayer.
There is selectivity in some quarters in how the high wall separating church and state is looked at. One set of rules — a strict set — applies when the issue is governmental support, even indirect, of religious activity, and there is a lax set of rules when the issue is whether public funds can be provided to those who bash religion. The inconsistency is explained by the anti-religious thought that has dominated Western culture and which is too often accepted as a legitimate part of the Western democratic heritage. In this skewed view of things, government is regarded as neutral in religious matters when it finances anti-religious expression.
This formula explains why a crèche that depicts the Virgin Mary is not to be placed on public property, while public funds can be used to defile the same symbol. In the first case, the government is supporting religion; in the second, it does no more than allow others the freedom of expression.
To my surprise and his credit, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, leader of Reform Jewry, issued a strong statement expressing concern for Catholic sensibilities, something I was unaware of until it was called to my attention by an editor at this newspaper. Still, if there was a dominant Jewish position, it was in support of the art and against the mayor who has received backing from the Orthodox. Overwhelmingly, the rank and file of New York Jews is clearly in the museum’s corner. There is scant concern for the evident anguish of Catholics, not even a slight murmur of empathy for Cardinal O’Connor, whose condemnation of the display might have evoked a sympathetic hearing among Jews.
It is too extreme to charge that an anti-Catholic bias persists in American Jewish life. Sensitivity is another matter and on that count the record is not one that we can be proud of. It is unfortunate that few American Jews can begin to sense the pain of Catholics, to see that they are hurt when their symbols and artifacts are defiled.
For all of American Jewry’s elevation of the First Amendment as the noblest enshrinement of liberty, I imagine that if the shoe were on the other foot we would not so readily proclaim the virtues of unlimited, publicly funded expressions of anti-religion. It is usually not attractive to make inter-ethnic or inter-religious comparisons, to suggest that one group is favored while another is mistreated. That is usually a sly way of giving vent to prejudice. But can there be any question as to where we would stand if a Torah scroll was utilized in an obscene or sacrilegious fashion in what was called a work of art? For that matter, what are the odds as to whether the Brooklyn Museum would ever exhibit such a work?
The controversial exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum has given us an unwelcome lesson in the anti-religious tendencies that inform much of what is considered to be contemporary cultural life. In the great debate over the exhibit, the First Amendment rights of museums and artists have understandably been advanced, without sufficient attention being given to the corollary First Amendment strictures that mandate governmental neutrality in religious matters.
I am no fan of Mayor Giuliani, not by a long shot. True to form, he has been clumsy and bullying in his cancellation of a legal contract and in his threat to evict the museum from the architectural treasure that it has occupied and brought distinction to. He had an opportunity to articulate a principled position, to explain why government ought not to act in a hostile way toward religion. He could have taught by leadership, not by threatening, and he could have embraced an eloquence that places principle above narrow political gain. Instead of saying that the city would abide by a contract, despite the pain caused to a great number of New Yorkers, he took a path that guaranteed the seat in court.
I recognize that those who have suggested that some of the challenged art was not meant to be offensive to Catholics may be right. When we compare what is now in dispute with what has been displayed elsewhere, it may be that what has been called a “sensation” may primarily be an exploitative ploy aimed at attracting attention, attendance and financial support. Alas, the mayor could not resist taking the bait.
Giuliani has, however, raised a basic question that must not be obscured by any animus toward him or by one’s personal aesthetic. Why should the designation of something as art or literature or any form of expression result in its exemption from the constitutional ban on governmental action that advances or inhibits religion? It isn’t sufficient to argue that the First Amendment guarantees freedom of expression. Prayer is, after all, inherently a form of expression, yet I am certain that there is no First Amendment aficionado who contends that government can promote sectarian prayer.
There is selectivity in some quarters in how the high wall separating church and state is looked at. One set of rules — a strict set — applies when the issue is governmental support, even indirect, of religious activity, and there is a lax set of rules when the issue is whether public funds can be provided to those who bash religion. The inconsistency is explained by the anti-religious thought that has dominated Western culture and which is too often accepted as a legitimate part of the Western democratic heritage. In this skewed view of things, government is regarded as neutral in religious matters when it finances anti-religious expression.
This formula explains why a crèche that depicts the Virgin Mary is not to be placed on public property, while public funds can be used to defile the same symbol. In the first case, the government is supporting religion; in the second, it does no more than allow others the freedom of expression.
To my surprise and his credit, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, leader of Reform Jewry, issued a strong statement expressing concern for Catholic sensibilities, something I was unaware of until it was called to my attention by an editor at this newspaper. Still, if there was a dominant Jewish position, it was in support of the art and against the mayor who has received backing from the Orthodox. Overwhelmingly, the rank and file of New York Jews is clearly in the museum’s corner. There is scant concern for the evident anguish of Catholics, not even a slight murmur of empathy for Cardinal O’Connor, whose condemnation of the display might have evoked a sympathetic hearing among Jews.
It is too extreme to charge that an anti-Catholic bias persists in American Jewish life. Sensitivity is another matter and on that count the record is not one that we can be proud of. It is unfortunate that few American Jews can begin to sense the pain of Catholics, to see that they are hurt when their symbols and artifacts are defiled.
For all of American Jewry’s elevation of the First Amendment as the noblest enshrinement of liberty, I imagine that if the shoe were on the other foot we would not so readily proclaim the virtues of unlimited, publicly funded expressions of anti-religion. It is usually not attractive to make inter-ethnic or inter-religious comparisons, to suggest that one group is favored while another is mistreated. That is usually a sly way of giving vent to prejudice. But can there be any question as to where we would stand if a Torah scroll was utilized in an obscene or sacrilegious fashion in what was called a work of art? For that matter, what are the odds as to whether the Brooklyn Museum would ever exhibit such a work?
Friday, October 08, 1999
Don’t Keep 4th-Grade Test A Secret
(Originally published in the New York Jewish Week)
There’s never been a test like the English Language Arts exam given earlier this year to New York’s fourth-graders, on whose slender shoulders and relatively poor grades now rests much of the current discussion of what is wrong with the education of our children.
These mostly 9-year olds — some were only 8 at the time of the test — must know what it is to be guinea pigs in a glass house whose walls are surrounded by politicians, journalists, educational bureaucrats and other onlookers who have invested a trivial pursuit with undeserved significance.
First there were the front-page stories detailing how poorly most of the students had done on a test they should have had little difficulty in passing, provided that they were properly taught and had the requisite skills. The Jewish media chipped in with articles showing how each school had fared and with the doleful news that too many of the most Orthodox yeshivas were guilty of a shande far der yidden — disgrace of the Jews — because of their poor performance.
Then there were reports of the tens of thousands of failing students who were required to attend summer school and of the many who would be left back. Now we have the news that some of the test results were misinterpreted by CTB/McGraw-Hill, the company that developed key parts of the test, so that overall the students did not do as poorly as was first reported.
McGraw-Hill owns and has copyrighted the exam. It cannot “be reproduced or distributed in any form by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.” The instruction manual contains repeated warnings against duplication and requires that teachers sign a document averring that they “are not to discuss this test, show it to anyone, or photocopy these materials.”
Taken literally — and there is no reason why it should be read otherwise — this means that teachers cannot discuss any aspect of the exam with fellow teachers or with their supervisors.
For all of the attention that has been paid, there has been nary a comment about the appropriateness of a public test required of all fourth-graders in New York being the private property of an outside business that has barred any of the documents from being reproduced. On occasion, The New York Times publishes SAT questions or parts of other exams and, yet, for all of the coverage that has been given to the English Arts Test, it has had nothing to say about the test itself and the rules established by McGraw-Hill.
As president of the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School, I am involved with three schools whose students took the test. One school did poorly, another performed fairly well and the third did very well.
Because of this responsibility and my intensive involvement in day-school education, I wanted to have more than a second-hand view of what had transpired, which meant getting the exam material. Because I did not know of the McGraw-Hill embargo, I mistakenly assumed that this would be an easy task.
Ultimately, persistence paid off and I have the material. I believe that it is wrongful to keep these tests hidden from the public. Regents exams are public information, as are nearly all other standardized tests, including those for admission to college, graduate and professional schools. An entire industry has arisen around test-preparation. The McGraw-Hill folks should be well compensated for their efforts, as I am sure they are, and they also should learn how to properly interpret material that they have produced. Beyond this, standardized, governmentally mandated and funded tests must be regarded as public information. The right to know, so vigorously asserted in more tenuous situations, must override the monopolistic impulse of a private corporation.
Without public disclosure, it’s not possible to have an open or reliable discussion of the suitability of this material for fourth-graders. This is not an idle issue. The new language arts test replaces a predecessor that had been discarded as too easy and therefore also unreliable. My admittedly inexpert review of the material leaves me with serious doubts as to whether the McGraw-Hill test is too difficult for too many children. At the least, this is a matter that is entitled to a public airing.
The secrecy rules imposed by McGraw-Hill contributed directly to the misinterpretation of results and to the harm done to thousands of children and their families. In fact, what occurred has as yet not been satisfactorily explained. When I received the test results from Albany, I immediately noticed that each school was given a cumulative score in the 600-700 range. There was no explanation as to what this number meant, nor was I able to get a satisfactory answer from the state officials I contacted.
The instructions for teachers and students that accompanied the test raise questions about the competency of the people who wrote the stuff. What are we to make of phrases like “an independent writing prompt” or “nationally normed test” or “shrink-wrapped packages”? To think that these are the same people who are measuring the language-arts skills of our schoolchildren.
As important as these considerations are, they may be less compelling than the wrongful barrier interposed by state and McGraw-Hill officials that deprives parents of the ability to work with their children in preparation for the test. Parents have an overriding interest in the results and many would want to work with their kids. The improper and unwise rules of the game make it difficult for them to fulfill their parental instinct and obligation.
It may be legal for the state to enter into this kind of arrangement with McGraw-Hill, although I have my doubts about this, but what is legal may not be right. It also isn’t right if none of these concerns has made it into the voluminous reports on the fourth-grade exam. New standardized tests on other subjects are to be introduced soon and, if this precedent is allowed to stand, a veil of secrecy will be imposed on them.
Let us have a public debate about the propriety of the privatization of public testing and let us allow parents entry into a process that deeply involves the educational growth and well being of their children.
There’s never been a test like the English Language Arts exam given earlier this year to New York’s fourth-graders, on whose slender shoulders and relatively poor grades now rests much of the current discussion of what is wrong with the education of our children.
These mostly 9-year olds — some were only 8 at the time of the test — must know what it is to be guinea pigs in a glass house whose walls are surrounded by politicians, journalists, educational bureaucrats and other onlookers who have invested a trivial pursuit with undeserved significance.
First there were the front-page stories detailing how poorly most of the students had done on a test they should have had little difficulty in passing, provided that they were properly taught and had the requisite skills. The Jewish media chipped in with articles showing how each school had fared and with the doleful news that too many of the most Orthodox yeshivas were guilty of a shande far der yidden — disgrace of the Jews — because of their poor performance.
Then there were reports of the tens of thousands of failing students who were required to attend summer school and of the many who would be left back. Now we have the news that some of the test results were misinterpreted by CTB/McGraw-Hill, the company that developed key parts of the test, so that overall the students did not do as poorly as was first reported.
McGraw-Hill owns and has copyrighted the exam. It cannot “be reproduced or distributed in any form by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.” The instruction manual contains repeated warnings against duplication and requires that teachers sign a document averring that they “are not to discuss this test, show it to anyone, or photocopy these materials.”
Taken literally — and there is no reason why it should be read otherwise — this means that teachers cannot discuss any aspect of the exam with fellow teachers or with their supervisors.
For all of the attention that has been paid, there has been nary a comment about the appropriateness of a public test required of all fourth-graders in New York being the private property of an outside business that has barred any of the documents from being reproduced. On occasion, The New York Times publishes SAT questions or parts of other exams and, yet, for all of the coverage that has been given to the English Arts Test, it has had nothing to say about the test itself and the rules established by McGraw-Hill.
As president of the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School, I am involved with three schools whose students took the test. One school did poorly, another performed fairly well and the third did very well.
Because of this responsibility and my intensive involvement in day-school education, I wanted to have more than a second-hand view of what had transpired, which meant getting the exam material. Because I did not know of the McGraw-Hill embargo, I mistakenly assumed that this would be an easy task.
Ultimately, persistence paid off and I have the material. I believe that it is wrongful to keep these tests hidden from the public. Regents exams are public information, as are nearly all other standardized tests, including those for admission to college, graduate and professional schools. An entire industry has arisen around test-preparation. The McGraw-Hill folks should be well compensated for their efforts, as I am sure they are, and they also should learn how to properly interpret material that they have produced. Beyond this, standardized, governmentally mandated and funded tests must be regarded as public information. The right to know, so vigorously asserted in more tenuous situations, must override the monopolistic impulse of a private corporation.
Without public disclosure, it’s not possible to have an open or reliable discussion of the suitability of this material for fourth-graders. This is not an idle issue. The new language arts test replaces a predecessor that had been discarded as too easy and therefore also unreliable. My admittedly inexpert review of the material leaves me with serious doubts as to whether the McGraw-Hill test is too difficult for too many children. At the least, this is a matter that is entitled to a public airing.
The secrecy rules imposed by McGraw-Hill contributed directly to the misinterpretation of results and to the harm done to thousands of children and their families. In fact, what occurred has as yet not been satisfactorily explained. When I received the test results from Albany, I immediately noticed that each school was given a cumulative score in the 600-700 range. There was no explanation as to what this number meant, nor was I able to get a satisfactory answer from the state officials I contacted.
The instructions for teachers and students that accompanied the test raise questions about the competency of the people who wrote the stuff. What are we to make of phrases like “an independent writing prompt” or “nationally normed test” or “shrink-wrapped packages”? To think that these are the same people who are measuring the language-arts skills of our schoolchildren.
As important as these considerations are, they may be less compelling than the wrongful barrier interposed by state and McGraw-Hill officials that deprives parents of the ability to work with their children in preparation for the test. Parents have an overriding interest in the results and many would want to work with their kids. The improper and unwise rules of the game make it difficult for them to fulfill their parental instinct and obligation.
It may be legal for the state to enter into this kind of arrangement with McGraw-Hill, although I have my doubts about this, but what is legal may not be right. It also isn’t right if none of these concerns has made it into the voluminous reports on the fourth-grade exam. New standardized tests on other subjects are to be introduced soon and, if this precedent is allowed to stand, a veil of secrecy will be imposed on them.
Let us have a public debate about the propriety of the privatization of public testing and let us allow parents entry into a process that deeply involves the educational growth and well being of their children.
Friday, September 17, 1999
Limit The Freebies To Jewish State
(Originally published in the New York Jewish Week)
Summer is the main season for boondoggling — taking advantage of free or heavily subsidized trips to Israel — an expensive pastime that has the sole virtue of being for ordinary folks and not just the rich people. Although it is practiced throughout the year, boondoggling reaches its peak in July and August when thousands of diaspora Jews trek on expense-paid hegiras to the Holy Land. Federations, foundations, the Jewish Agency and other repositories of philanthropic funds that are intended for the betterment of Jewish life foot the bill.
Betterment there is aplenty, as airlines, hotels, restaurants and all who live off the tourist trade in Israel reap economic advantage. The prime beneficiaries are educators, community workers, students and whoever else manages, with or without protektzia, to connect with any of the dozens of organizations that offer free trips as they exult in self-delusory ecstasy that a stay in Israel brings about extraordinary transformational results.
This has not been an especially busy year for the boondoggle business, as 1999 is wedged between Israel’s 50th anniversary and the millennium. Recently, though, there was an especially lamentable example of the tendency to spend limited Jewish communal money on these extravaganzas. More than 350 Jewish educators from around the world came to Israel for two weeks as the guests of the Jewish Agency. They were wined and dined; the culminating event was an expensive catered affair at the magnificent Haas Promenade in East Jerusalem that was followed by a fireworks display.
It may be that the Israeli army had spare cherry bombs that it wanted to dispose of. More likely — and I am told by educators that this was the case — the Jewish Agency had unspent money and could not think of any better way to use the funds at hand.
I am not against going to Israel. We all should go, as often as we can, to experience the glory of our heritage and, less important, to help the country’s economy along the way. I also accept, to a degree, the premise of Birthright Israel, that a community-financed trip to Israel may make a difference in the lives of marginally committed teenagers.
What I object to is the lavish expenditures to bring Americans and other foreigners wholesale to Israel and the comparable use of Israeli funds to send Israelis abroad on what usually amounts to shopping and pleasure junkets. The programs that involve educators, community workers, etc. are an egregious example of the broader tendency that encompasses, as just one more illustration, the hundreds of academics who are invited, all-expenses paid, to Israeli conferences on arcane subjects.
What I also object to is the pollyannaish fantasy that sending principals, teachers and others will result in their being better at what they are paid to do. While there is zero evidence that these trips improve job performance or lead to other communal gains, they are failsafe arrangements. The trip to Israel alone is proof of success. Nothing more is required, although it is customary to ask the participants to complete a questionnaire that asks about their degree of satisfaction. It is customary as well for the junketeers to respond that it was a wonderful and meaningful experience and ought to be repeated.
Because it is failsafe, people in the philanthropy business constantly dream up new variations on the theme. Leadership training has become popular. Jewish kids of college age are selected, and while few have demonstrated anything that can be called leadership potential, it is expected that they will emerge from 10 days or two weeks in Israel as nascent Jewish leaders.
All that is being proved is that tens of millions of dollars of Jewish philanthropy can add up to lots of zeros.
These activities limit what foundations and federations can do to advance Jewish life. People involved in day schools claim that for all of the talk of additional philanthropic support, the situation is no better than it used to be and it may be worse. The funders insist that they are doing more. Presumably, both positions cannot be right. Or can they? The explanation lies in the preference of funders for tangential projects, rather than direct support to the schools. Trips to Israel are one manifestation of the trend. There are also family education, workshops and conferences, all of which allow philanthropic givers to believe that they are aiding Jewish education when, in fact, the schools are not being helped.
Day schools are badly underfunded, even with parents being pressured to pay rapidly rising tuition charges. It is difficult to determine the extent to which the high cost of day school education is a disincentive for marginally religious parents. It is certain that inadequate facilities, limited academic programs and a slew of other shortcomings are a disincentive in many cases. American Jewry is not willing to make the investment needed to make day schools attractive alternatives to families that are Jews at risk.
Instead of sending principals to Israel, the money should be utilized to directly assist struggling day schools. This will make them better institutions of Jewish learning. In the process, principals will be capable of doing a better job.
Summer is the main season for boondoggling — taking advantage of free or heavily subsidized trips to Israel — an expensive pastime that has the sole virtue of being for ordinary folks and not just the rich people. Although it is practiced throughout the year, boondoggling reaches its peak in July and August when thousands of diaspora Jews trek on expense-paid hegiras to the Holy Land. Federations, foundations, the Jewish Agency and other repositories of philanthropic funds that are intended for the betterment of Jewish life foot the bill.
Betterment there is aplenty, as airlines, hotels, restaurants and all who live off the tourist trade in Israel reap economic advantage. The prime beneficiaries are educators, community workers, students and whoever else manages, with or without protektzia, to connect with any of the dozens of organizations that offer free trips as they exult in self-delusory ecstasy that a stay in Israel brings about extraordinary transformational results.
This has not been an especially busy year for the boondoggle business, as 1999 is wedged between Israel’s 50th anniversary and the millennium. Recently, though, there was an especially lamentable example of the tendency to spend limited Jewish communal money on these extravaganzas. More than 350 Jewish educators from around the world came to Israel for two weeks as the guests of the Jewish Agency. They were wined and dined; the culminating event was an expensive catered affair at the magnificent Haas Promenade in East Jerusalem that was followed by a fireworks display.
It may be that the Israeli army had spare cherry bombs that it wanted to dispose of. More likely — and I am told by educators that this was the case — the Jewish Agency had unspent money and could not think of any better way to use the funds at hand.
I am not against going to Israel. We all should go, as often as we can, to experience the glory of our heritage and, less important, to help the country’s economy along the way. I also accept, to a degree, the premise of Birthright Israel, that a community-financed trip to Israel may make a difference in the lives of marginally committed teenagers.
What I object to is the lavish expenditures to bring Americans and other foreigners wholesale to Israel and the comparable use of Israeli funds to send Israelis abroad on what usually amounts to shopping and pleasure junkets. The programs that involve educators, community workers, etc. are an egregious example of the broader tendency that encompasses, as just one more illustration, the hundreds of academics who are invited, all-expenses paid, to Israeli conferences on arcane subjects.
What I also object to is the pollyannaish fantasy that sending principals, teachers and others will result in their being better at what they are paid to do. While there is zero evidence that these trips improve job performance or lead to other communal gains, they are failsafe arrangements. The trip to Israel alone is proof of success. Nothing more is required, although it is customary to ask the participants to complete a questionnaire that asks about their degree of satisfaction. It is customary as well for the junketeers to respond that it was a wonderful and meaningful experience and ought to be repeated.
Because it is failsafe, people in the philanthropy business constantly dream up new variations on the theme. Leadership training has become popular. Jewish kids of college age are selected, and while few have demonstrated anything that can be called leadership potential, it is expected that they will emerge from 10 days or two weeks in Israel as nascent Jewish leaders.
All that is being proved is that tens of millions of dollars of Jewish philanthropy can add up to lots of zeros.
These activities limit what foundations and federations can do to advance Jewish life. People involved in day schools claim that for all of the talk of additional philanthropic support, the situation is no better than it used to be and it may be worse. The funders insist that they are doing more. Presumably, both positions cannot be right. Or can they? The explanation lies in the preference of funders for tangential projects, rather than direct support to the schools. Trips to Israel are one manifestation of the trend. There are also family education, workshops and conferences, all of which allow philanthropic givers to believe that they are aiding Jewish education when, in fact, the schools are not being helped.
Day schools are badly underfunded, even with parents being pressured to pay rapidly rising tuition charges. It is difficult to determine the extent to which the high cost of day school education is a disincentive for marginally religious parents. It is certain that inadequate facilities, limited academic programs and a slew of other shortcomings are a disincentive in many cases. American Jewry is not willing to make the investment needed to make day schools attractive alternatives to families that are Jews at risk.
Instead of sending principals to Israel, the money should be utilized to directly assist struggling day schools. This will make them better institutions of Jewish learning. In the process, principals will be capable of doing a better job.
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