Focus
Having Faith In Faith
In new book, Reagan
administration official
urges Jews to reconnect
with religion.
SANDEE BRAWARSKY
Special to The Jewish News
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I AM YOUR NIECE.
I AM YOUR BEST FRIEND'S CHILD.
I AM YOUR GREAT- GRANDDAUGHTER.
r
or Elliot Abrams, the issue of
Jewish continuity is clear-cut:
Only Judaism, or faith, can
sustain the Jewish people. He
dismisses ethnicity, social activism, a
connection to Israel or the Holocaust as
elements of an "amorphous Jewishness"
that can not be passed down over gen-
erations.
In Faith or Fear: How Jews Can
Survive in a Christian Culture (Free
Press), a bold new book that outlines
his argument, Abrams, a former assis-
tant secretary of state in both Reagan
administrations, leaps into the national
debate on Jewish survival. Its not the
Christian right that most threatens Jews
in Ainerica, he explains, but Jews' own
disregard for Judaism. He wants to put
Judaism— the religion — back into
the center of Jewish life. "Unless the
'community is based on faith in God,
what possible purpose could there be
for;:concern-about its survival," he asks.
Sine the book was published over
the summer, Abrams says, in a felet
phone interview from his Washingthn,
D.C.,, office, the response has been, --
``vei3i. rewarding." The president of the
Ethici
, and Public Policy Center, he
explaini. that he intended the book as
analysis that would have some impact
on public discourse.
To the Jewish community, Abrams
calls for a shift in energies, away from
efforts to "promote a secular society and
to ensure that individual Jews can suc-
ceed in America" to a new focus on the
goal of keeping the Jewish community
vital through faith. He argues in favor
of allocating additional financial
resources and attention toward Jewish
education.
To individuals, he states, "I can't
argue about faith. I can argue about
practice. Judaism is not an abstract reli-
gion. What we each should be doing is
practicing it more." Even for those
unsure about their beliefs, Abrams
asserts that they too should take their
children to synagogue and give them a
Jewish education, to give them "a fight-
ing chance" to remain Jewish.
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Barbara and Irving Nusbaum,
Campaign Chairs
-
Sandee Brawarsky is a book critic for
the New York Jewish Week.
Abrams has clashed more than once
in public with Harvard law professor
Alan Dershowitz, whose own recent
book on the same subject, The
Vanishing American Jew takes a different
tack. The two men — whom Abrams
says have had a long, friendly relation-
ship — both emphasize Jewish educa-.
tion, but Dershowitz's vision is more
embracing of all Jews, however they
choose to express their commitment to
Judaism. Abrams says that Jews doing
whatever "works for them" is "what got
us into this mess."
The book opens with an overview of
American Jewish demographics. Citing
the 1990 National Jewish Population
Study and other research,.he describes
"a disaster in the making."
He writes: "Of the 6.8 million peo-
ple who are Jews or of Jewish descent,
1.1 million say they have no religion
and 1.3 million have joined another
religion. This means that one-third of
the people in America of Jewish ethnic
origin no longer report Judaism as their
current religion."
Abrams shows how American Jewish_
attitudes toward religion and assimila-
tion have evolved. In the 1920s, many
Jews of the immigrant generation saw
secularism as the safest path in an
America that was largely Christian, and
that sentiment persists.
Now, as he writes, many Jews are
biased-unfairly against religious
Christians, based on historical fears and
also on politics. Abrams believes that
"immense changes" in Christian dispo-
sition toward Jews and Judaism have
been underappreciated, and he calls for
new attitudes among Jews toward
Christians and Christian religiosity.
Unafraid of breaking down barriers
between church and state, he is in favor
of public support of religious education.
He also writes of the strength of the
Orthodox community — which many
expected would die out in secular
America — who prove his point about
the sustaining power of faith. And he
writes of the rifts between the denomi-
nations, criticizing the disrespect among
other Jews of the Orthodox, and the
Orthodox community's contempt for
others. "The most divisive factor in
American Jewish life, then, is Judaism."
Although some might be surprised to
see Abrams writing about Jewish issues
rather than American politics, he says
he's been thinking about these issues
since college. The 49-year-old father of
three — to whom Faith or Fear is dedi-
cated — grew up in Queens and
attended Hebrew school at the Hollis
Hills Jewish Center. [1]