COMMENT

The 'Vanishing' Jews
Are Still With Us

N

GARY ROSENBLATT
Special to The Jewish News

T

he general media has discov-
ered the decade-old Jewish
Continuity Crisis — with a
vengeance. New York maga-
zine's July 14 cover story, "Are
American Jews Disappearing?" comes
on the heels of a Sunday New York
Times Magazine article (called
"Vanishing,") and a National Review
piece by Elliott Abrams titled "Can
Jews Survive?" The upshot of each is
- that, with increasing social acceptance
of Jews by Christian America, the
American-Jewish community is assimi-
lating itself out of existence.
Anyone who has read a Jewish
newspaper since the unveiling of the
1990 population study that found a
national intermarriage rate of 52 per-
cent knows the story, but the impact is
multiplied when it appears in major
outlets of the secular press. That's
because we have this love-hate rela-
tionship with the media, complaining
bitterly when it focuses on Israel or
Jewish issues in a critical light, but
also feeling a secret thrill of impor-
tance that, good or bad, hey, we're
being taken seriously. And there are
those who feel that it's all right if
American Jews feel uncomfortable
about this glut of stories on the threat
of increasing assimilation because it's a
topic worth worrying about.

Gary Rosenblatt is editor and publish-
er of the New York Jewish Week.

But why now? Perhaps because
Alan Dershowitz and Elliott Abrams
have books out on the subject, taking
different points of view. Dershowitz's
The Vanishing American Jew calls for "a
Judaism that transcends the religious,
that makes room for the secular
Abrams who, in his Faith Or Fear:
How Jews Can Survive In A Christian
America, insists that if American Jews
abandon religion for culture, they will
disappear.
On an emotional level, I tend
toward Abrams' assessment that Jews
will survive "if they cling to their
faith, to their Torah" because that is
what makes us Jews and has sustained
us for centuries.
But objectively, I agree with sociol-
ogist Egon Mayer's assessment that
"we in the organized Jewish communi-
ty are worried less that American Jews
will disappear and more that we'll dis-
appear."
He says the organized Jewish com-
munity is obsessed with the sense of
crisis that fuels virtually every Jewish
cause. ("How many organizations do
you know dealing with Jewish happi-
ness?" he asks.) And while there is lit-
tle if any growth in the American-
Jewish population — there are now
about the same 5.5 million Jews that
there were in 1950 — and there is a
decline in synagogue and Jewish orga-
nizational membership, "the Jews are
still out there, in a sense thumbing
their noses at us.
"In effect," says Mayer, "they're say-
ing, 'make me an offer I can't refuse,

EDITORS
NOTEBOOK

Emergency
Response
For 30 Years

ALAN HITS KY
Associate Editor

Eva Mames received a
telephone call two
weeks ago as CNN
was broadcasting the
scene of the Ben
Yehuda Street bomb-
ing in Jerusalem.
"Eva," the caller said,

Nancy Newman Adler, Eva Mames and
a dinner centerpiece — a model of an
MDA ambulance.

"I want to donate an ambulance to
Magen David Adom."
Thirty years ago, Eva's husband
made similar calls under similar cir-
cumstances. Dr. John J. Mames was
watching television reports of the
heavy fighting during the Six-Day

How long will we get enough for a minyan?

and tell me why I should spend
Saturday mornings in the synagogue
instead of on the golf course,'" says
Mayer.
If there is a crisis, then, it is in the
leadership of the American-Jewish
community — its synagogues, organi-
zations and federations — to offer a
Jewish life meaningful enough to
make people want to join up and par-
ticipate, not out of guilt, because guilt
won't work anymore, but out of a
sense of personal fulfillment. That's a
tall order because it requires creativity
and sensitivity. The old appeals of a
State of Israel fighting for physical sur-
vival and of Jews around the world in
need of rescue are, thank God, outdat-

ed, for the most part.
As for the concern about dwindling
Jewish numbers, since when, Mayer
wonders, have Jews been obsessed
with large numbers? "True, you need
10 for a minyan," he observes, "but
once you have it, there's no theological
difference whether you have 11 or
100. Jewish life has long been kept
alive by a small core of activists, but
what is so troubling these days is that
more and more Jews grow up discon-
nected from our synagogues and com-
munity without even knowing what
they're missing. That is the challenge
to those of us who want to see them
inside the circle."

War. As president of Shaarit
Haplaytah, he called on his
fellow Holocaust survivors
to do something for Israel
during the crisis.
The group quickly raised
$4,000 to pay for an ambu-
lance for Magen David
Adom (Red Shield of
David), Israel's equivalent of
the American Red Cross.
Thirty years later, the all-
volunteer Dr. John J.
Mames Chapter of the American Red
Magen David for Israel will celebrate a
remarkable total at its annual dinner
next Wednesday: $9 million in contri-
butions over three decades, including
102 ambulances, the Waller
Emergency Medical Center in
Ashdod, laboratories and wings at the
MDA Blood Fractionation Institute in
Ramat Gan, and more than 200 train-
ing scholarships for paramedics.

It's all been accomplished with vol-
unteers. The local chapter has never
had a paid office staff although, Mrs.
Mames admits, "a college student
helps me with the dinner invitations."
The group has an enviable expense
record of 1-2 percent of donations for
things like a telephone and postage.
Rent is free for MDA because the
office is the Mames home.
After Dr. Mames' death in 1989,
Eva Mames has carried on a two-sided
labor of love. On the one hand, she is
continuing something that was started
by her beloved husband. On the other
side is her passion for the cause, for
helping the people of Israel.
"John was always doing something
about Israel or the Holocaust, long
before it was in style," said Mrs.
Mames. After that 1967 donation of
an ambulance, the ARMDI office in
New York asked John Mames to start
NOTEBOOK on page 42

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