By Michael Kaufman
Dear Mr. Harrison: Thank you for your kind words about my book, In One Era, Out the Other – A Memoir of a 20th-21st Century Jewish Life, (3/23/13) and your “enthusiastically recommend[ing]” the book. No less gratifying is your finding in the last chapter the “qualities we should attempt to inculcate in ourselves and our children and grandchildren, [as they] can be the model for anyone seeking to write an ethical will.”
Your discerning, thoughtful review touched upon some weighty issues. I respectfully disagree regarding a pluralistic Judaism being the preferable choice. A sincere convert of any race, color or ethnic origin can become a Jew. Like admission into any club – or nation for that matter – there are entry requirements, including a commitment to observe the club’s bylaws or the country’s laws and constitution – which, in the instance of Judaism, is the Torah. Appealing, as you say, to “a wide assortment of Jewish view-points,” you may often need to emulate the rabbi, who tells one of two disputants before him, “You’re right.” “But, but rabbi . . .” protests the second .” “You’re right too,” he responds: When a third then asks, “How can they both be right?” the rabbi replies: “And you’re right, too!” However there are indeed absolutes in life, times when one must take a stand. While, as you say, there is “much to be learned from Republicans . . .and Democrats,” when you get into the voting booth you are obliged to choose.
You don’t see – as do I — intermarriage as “a loss” for the Jewish people. I stand guilty as charged. Intermarriage is a staggering, monumental calamity of historic proportions. Intermarriage means the end of the Jewish people. The Jewish people, like the spotted Owl, have become an endangered species because of intermarriage, late marriage, no marriage, new lifestyles, no children, or too few to retain our demographic equilibrium. Intermarriage severs the link in a 4,000-year-old Jewish chain that stretches from our forefather Abraham to us. We have lost millions of Jews in America these last decades primarily through intermarriage – an immense tragedy to our people. How could anyone be equanimious about these losses – let alone question that they exist?
Among the Orthodox however, we witness the opposite – burgeoning, explosive growth. The Orthopraxing live vibrant, committed Jewish lives, rarely intermarry, marry early and have large families. They provide their children with the intensive Jewish education vital to assure that they and their descendants will live full, committed Jewish lives. Their concern about the massive Jewish losses is expressed by their dedicating themselves to Jewish continuity. It has been suggested by some that what is involved is an exchange rather than a loss, but as the numbers make clear, except for isolated instances we can’t honestly speak about an “exchange”. The liberal camp keeps on hemorrhaging Jews. Even with the influx of non-Jews, many – perhaps most – liberal synagogues are, more often than not, half empty. Many a liberal rabbi has told me that without the non-Jews many temples would have long since closed – as indeed have a third of all Conservative Jewish day schools in America.
It should be clear — we are talking about Jews who intermarry. A Jew who marries a sincerely motivated, properly converted, practicing Jew does not intermarry. Such sincere converts, but especially if they give their children the intensive Jewish education needed to live Jewishly and continue the tradition, are welcome additions to any synagogue, at times serving as a healthy infusion of energy into a moribund Jewish community. It is not the properly converted, fully practicing Jews that constitute the problem.
Compassionate as we must feel towards anyone who intermarries, no sophistry or the occasional instance of someone who intermarries and brings up a child as “Jewish” (whatever that may mean) can obfuscate the fact that ultimately that Jew has boldly opted out from the Jewish people, in essence saying: “I have broken the connection; the chain of Jewish tradition ends with me.” With but few exceptions, he is almost inexorably lost to the Jewish people. His grandchildren, if not his children, will not be Jewish -– the rare exceptions only proving the rule.
Right now we’re in the Jewish Continuity voting booth. Before us is a variety of Jewish religious ideologies, almost all of which have proven abject failures by the one yardstick that ultimately counts: Jewish continuity. The question before us is straightforward: Do I want my grandchildren to be Jewish? I have to make a firm decision. How will I bring up my children to assure that they and their descendants are Jews? The candidates listed before me represent the following parties: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Secular-Humanist, the Jewish Counterculturist-Universalist-Love-Everyone Party, and the Jewish Ultra-Liberal–Anti-Israel-Campus-Protesters Party. The party for which I will vote is the one which has historically proven itself to be the greatest guarantor of Jewish continuity.
In all honesty and without shillyshallying, which lever would you pull down?
With good wishes,
Michael Kaufman
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Editor’s Reply: Thank you for your thoughtful letter. As I belong to a Conservative congregation, one might say that I have pulled that “lever,” in so far as membership. However, as a Jew, I have been welcomed by congregations in the first five of your categories, and as a reporter I have covered meetings of the last two. Our publication’s motto is that “There is a Jewish story everywhere” and no more so is this true than at gatherings of self-identified Jews, no matter what their religious practices. To your point that the chain of continuity ought to be the sina qua non of a Jew’s marital choice, I find myself saying this is indeed an important consideration, but should not constitute the only consideration. More important to my mind is that the potential partner holds him- or herself to a code of high-minded ethics. It would be wonderful if outward religiosity (no matter the denomination) were an indicator of inner morality, but alas this hope has been too often unrealized. Given the choice of a marriage between two honest, upright people and one mismatching ethical and unethical partners, I’d choose the former–regardless of what religion, or denomination of that religion, the pair professes.
Mr. Kaufman, allow me please to reciprocate your kind good wishes. May our debate prompt similar discussions among readers.