would remain. The comparable figures for
Reform and Conservative were 26 and 38.
By the generation of great-grandchildren,
the figures were six, 13, and 24, respectively. And since 1998, birth rates have
dropped and intermarriage has increased.
As a matter of historical record, I’m not
aware of any Jewish community that has
long survived without widespread Jewish
religious practice and a core of Torah
scholarship. And on the present evidence,
no current Diaspora seems destined to be
the exception.
The key to retaining any unique identity is a sense of one’s distinctiveness.
Once, that awareness was automatic for
Jews. They observed numerous laws governing every aspect of life – eg, kashrut
and Shabbos – that readily distinguished
th em from their gentile neighbours. And
they worshipped a different G-d. Just in
case that was not enough, their gentile
neighbours were ever ready to remind
them of their differences.
But none of those factors operate to any
great degree for most Jews today. They differ little from their non-Jewish neighbours
in what they eat or how they spend their
Saturdays. Anti-Semitism has not disappeared, to be sure, but rather than reinforcing a pre-existing sense of Jewish separation, it more often cows Jews and causes
them to hide their identity. That later process is most visible on university campuses. When Muslim students at the Irvine
campus of the University of California
tried to forcibly prevent Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren from speaking, 30 professors of Jewish studies signed a petition
against their criminal prosecution.
When asked to identify characteristically “Jewish traits”, American Jews are
likely to pick qualities such as a sense of
humour or progressive politics that are
not distinctively Jewish and cannot sustain an identity. Certainly they do not offer a particular Jewish mission. If a young
Jew seeks the realisation of his or her political agenda or even to perpetuate his
quirky sense of humour, it makes no
sense to specifically look for a Jewish
spouse. Better to cut directly to the chase
and choose one’s spouse based on their
56 JEWISH LIFE
ISSUE 82
“I HAVE NO DESIRE TO SEE NON-ORTHODOX JEWS
DISAPPEAR AND SIMPLY MELD INTO THEIR HOST
POPULATIONS, LEAVING BEHIND ONLY A DNA TRACE
OF 3 300 YEARS OF JEWISH HISTORY… EVERY SINGLE
JEW IS CRUCIAL TO THE FULFILMENT OF OUR
NATIONAL MISSION.
politics or sense of humour.
Ever since the Exodus from Egypt and
followed by standing at Mount Sinai, there
has been something else at the core of Jewish identity, the Torah. Every one of our ancestors believed that at Sinai the Jewish
people were uniquely singled out in human
history to hear as a people “the voice of G-d
speaking from amidst the fire”.
There, G-d revealed with absolute clarity a spiritual realm distinct from our daily
physical world. And He gave to the Jewish
people a set of laws designed to fashion
them into a holy nation by developing
their inborn spiritual qualities to allow
the fullest connection with the Divine.
For believing Jews, Sinai was the central
event in human history. Rashi comments
that had the Jewish people refused the Torah, the world would have returned to its
original formlessness. Rabbi Chaim of
Volozhin writes in Nefesh HaChaim – the
definitive text of the Lithuanian yeshivos –
that if the study of Torah would stop for
even a single moment, the world would
cease to exist. In Volozhin Yeshiva, there
were around-the-clock learning shifts to
ensure that Torah learning never stopped.
Today, however, the very claim that G-d
singled out the Jews from all the peoples
of the earth strikes most Jews as more
than a little racist and the event itself
wildly implausible. In that view, we possess no specific mission to reveal G-dliness to the world, and there is no reason
beyond the sentimental to worry about
our preservation as a distinct nation.
At the most, those who deny Sinai as a
historical event acknowledge Jewish law
as an organic development from within
the Jewish people akin to English common law. But the Torah explicitly excludes
that understanding. Prior to the giving of
the Torah, the people were warned not to
go up on the mountain, to create a barrier
in front of them. That barrier, writes Rabbi Shamshon Raphael Hirsch, reminds us
that the Torah came from without, not
from among the people. It was imposed
on us: in the words of the Midrash, G-d
held the mountain over our heads to compel our acceptance.
The laws of the Torah do not require being brought up to date, for they were never
up to date. The wearing of phylacteries
made no more sense 3 000 years ago than it
does today. The laws were commanded by
an Infinite G-d to show finite Man how he
can connect to Him, something that human
intelligence alone could not possibly derive.
If I could offer one bit of advice to the
young man eager to preserve a non-Orthodox Jewish identity, it would be to immerse himself in the classic Torah texts.
At least discover the abundant wisdom
for living in those texts. Rabbi Noach
Weinberg, the founder of Aish HaTorah,
used to start new students with a course
called “48 ways to wisdom”. The idea was
first to show them that the Torah works,
and only then attempt to prove to them
that it is true. Dr Alan Morinis has done
something of the same in bringing classic
mussar texts, works of ethical improvement, to secular Jews.
But, those Torah texts must be approached with the reverence and awe
worthy of works that have fully engaged,
engrossed, and challenged some of the
finest minds in human history, and continue to do so today. What better time to
commit to a full engagement with the
texts that have always been at the centre
of Jewish life than Pesach, the birth of
Jewish identity. JL
Adapted from The Jerusalem Post, 30 May
2014