OPINION

Keeping The Window Open

PHIL JACOBS

Managing Editor

10-year window of
opportunity.
Ten years.
That's all.
That's how long Barry
Shrage, president of the
Combined Jewish Philan-
thropies of Greater Boston,
told a packed workshop we
have to turn the alarming
rate of intermarriage and
assimilation around.
Mr. Shrage was speaking
at a Council of Jewish Fed-
eration's General Assembly
workshop last week entitled,
"Will Our Grandchildren Be
Part Of A Jewish Commun-
ity?" This was an issue that,
for the first time in the 60-
years of this gathering, took
center stage.
In plain talk, all the pro-
grams on fund-raising and
obtaining the best policy for
whatever issue are going to
mean less and less if Jews
become unaffiliated, assimi-
lated, intermarried or
anything else.
Rabbi David Hartman, an
author and philosopher from
Jerusalem, took a look in-
side of that 10-year window
and told everyone who would
listen what he saw.
He said for too long,
whenever Jews gather at a
convention, too much time is
spent lamenting the hard-
ships of the faith, no matter
what the problem. He said,
in so many words, very little
of the joy of being Jewish is
discussed; there are few Jews
who seem secure with them-
selves.
He said we spend too much
time trying to control the
lives of our children, worry-
ing about whether they
marry Jews or out of the
faith, worrying about
whether they are "good
Jews" or not. Who wants to
come to a Jewish meeting
when this is what happens?
Instead, he told us to worry
about ourselves. Don't worry
about your joy of Judaism;
worry about your personal
Jewish conduct.
"It's gishmach to be a Jew,"
he said. "And if you don't
know what that means, that's
the problem."
Rabbi Hartman talked
about his father, an immi-
grant who worked tirelessly
for low wages. On some Fri-
day nights, he didn't have
enough money to buy a
challah for the Shabbat
table. Yet his family still
observed the Sabbath. He
said his father never asked

.

him if Judaism was relevant
to his life. It wasn't even an
issue. Judaism, he said, was
his essence. He didn't ask
what he had to give up to be
a Jew. He was a Jew.
"We're a 3,000-year-old
people with a teen-age identi-
ty crisis," said Rabbi Hart-
man.
He said for too many of us
the issue is no longer
whether Judaism is our
essence. Instead, it's ques-
tions like does loyalty to tra-
ditions mean a Jew has to
give up the promise of a new
future? Or to go back to

Will the window
stay open or be
boarded up?

Sinai, does a Jew have to
leave the 20th century?
Jews will often say that
they love Judaism, but they
aren't interested in religion.
To that, Hartman said, in
order to love the Jewish peo-
ple a Jew has to learn about
the God of Israel because
that's where the Jewish peo-
ple began.
"We were a we before we
are an I," he said. "Jews are
energized when they go back
to Sinai and they share in
Moses' passion. It doesn't
begin with Moshiach now It
begins from believing in
Moses' dream?'
Judaism for us, here and
now, Rabbi Hartman said,
means believing in learning
and listening to the past.
With that knowledge, "a per-
son won't be intimidated by
fundamentalism, even Jewish
fundamentalism:'
When you hear of a 10-
year window of opportunity,
it should send chills up your
spine. Rabbi Hartman was
painfully correct. We do
spend too much time worry-
ing, too much time arguing,
too much time funneling our
energies into divisiveness
instead of unity.
A Reform friend once told
me he found a level of spiri-
tuality that was right for
him and for his family at
temple on Friday nights. To
many Orthodox, his level of
spirituality isn't even worth
considering, but that kind of
thinking helps close the
window. -
I was once at a bar mitzvah
for a poor, Soviet family.
Maybe 15 people were there
for the youngster, and for
most part this was the first
time they'd seen a bar mitz-
vah. The family didn't pay
the $145 the synagogue re-

quired for a kiddush. Not
members of the congrega-
tion, the family was not
permitted to come into the
auditorium and share in the
cake and wine. Again, the
window closes.
A rising national tide of
right wingism within the
Orthodox movement can be
seen right here in Detroit.
You are now judged by the
type of hat you wear, the
shul where you pray, the
neighborhood where you
live, the school your children
attend. It's as if your soul,
your heart, no longer count
for anything as long as you
are dressed apprOpriately.
This too closes the window.
Then there are a large
group of us who send our
children to day school and
afternoon Hebrew or Sunday
school. In the schools, our
teachers work long hours to
help many of our children
leave with some semblance
of Jewish knowledge. Yet
often that knowledge
vaporizes in the carpool ride
home. There's nothing at
home to back it up. We're
asking our teachers to do our
jobs.
A rabbi told me once to
light candles one Friday
night just to feel that
essence that Rabbi Hartman
talked about. Maybe after
that, rent a movie and stay
home on a Friday night. Do
something different, show
your children that all of this
Hebrew school stuff means
something. Judaism is real;

Artwork frorn the Los Angeles MIN by Calhaine Karow.Goprighte 1.1..hogine
Kanner. Oismbuted by Los ANN. Tom Syncrica to.

Shabbat is real; it's not just
something that happened
3,000 years ago. It's part of
our life now.
In so many words, this is
how Rabbi Hartman told us
to keep the window wide
open. But first we must open
some of our own windows,
our eyes, our souls, our lives.
I can tell you on a personal
level that 10 years ago, a
Friday night was a trip to
the mall. Religion and any
form of study were a million
miles away. We started to
change with a simple candle-
lighting.
Now on Friday nights,

when I see my two girls
wave the light from the
candle with their mother to
their eyes, I know exactly
what Rabbi Hartman and
Barry Shrage were talking
about.
Judaism is for all of us. It
is not to be discounted by
denominations or affilia-
tions. It's still there, as
Rabbi Hartman said, to be
found on Mt. Sinai. This is
what we need to know
together to keep that
window open.
Without it, 10 years from
now, the window will be
boarded up.

❑

Decline Of American Jewry
Has Continued In 1991

ROBERT ROCKAWAY

Special to The Jewish News

I

t's been a bad year for
American Jews. Dr. Leo-
nard Jeffries, head of the
City College of New York's
black studies program, ac-
cuses Jews of oppressing
black Americans and of hav-
ing financed the slave trade,
and non-Jewish academics,
black and white, keep silent.
Tensions between blacks
and Chasidic Jews in Crown
Heights, New York, explodes
into a pogrom, with black
youths screaming "Heil
Hitler," "We'll finish what
Hitler started," and "Death to

Former Detroiter Dr. Robert
Rockaway teaches American
Jewish history at Tel Aviv
University.

the Jews." Once again, non-
Jews and even some Jews are
slow to condemn the attacks.
A spate of recent films, in-
cluding Miller's Crossing and
Barton Fink, contain blatant-
ly negative stereotypes of
Jews, and no one seems to
notice or care. And for the
first time in memory, a presi-
dent of the United States ap-
pears on national television
and describes American Jews
who oppose his policies with
code words like "powerful
political forces," words or-
dinarily used by enemies of
the Jews and Israel.
The speech elicits a flood of
anti-Semitic calls and letters
to the White House suppor-
ting the president. The
hatred displayed in this
response stuns the president's
advisers.

What's going on? Why has
this been happening? And
why now? The evidence in-
dicates that these attacks are
not an aberration but are the
result of a decline in the
status of Jews in the United
States. Despite all the talk of
"Jewish power," the American
Jewish community today is in
a weaker position that it was
20 years ago. And this makes
Jews more vulnerable and
easier to attack.
Over the past 50 years, the
number and percent of Jews
in the United States has
declined. In 1940 there were
six million Jews in the United
States, which comprised 3.6
percent of the population.
Presently, American Jews
number less than 5.7 million.
Continued on Page 18

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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