Recently there has been renewed interest in the Pew Research Center’s 2013 study, A Portrait of Jewish Americans. Most of this is due to an article published on Nov 2, 2014 by Jack Wertheimer, a historian of American Jewry, and Steven M. Cohen, a sociologist of the same domain. They re-analyzed the findings and raised an alarm to the American Jewish Diaspora regarding what they consider to be the more threatening implications of the statistics.
One of the points they emphasized is that Jews can no longer brag about their high regard for family life and family values. The statistics show that many non-Orthodox young Jews are not marrying and that the fertility rate among non-Orthodox Jews is 1.7, a statistic very distant from the 2.1 required for growth. I share their sense of alarm, not only for American Jewry, but within our Canadian communities as well.
Soon after the Pew study was released I wrote an article in this newspaper relating the U.S. statistics to the Canadian scene. While there is significant history that makes us somewhat different than our American co-religionists, there is no reason for us to be complacent.
Pew points to a significant 32 per cent of Jews born after 1980 who see themselves as Jews but not by religion. This is a 70 per cent increase in that category from a study in 1990 while the population only increased by 25 per cent. They may define themselves differently, but they are not living a significant form of Jewish life and their children will be mostly lost to the Jewish people.
Whether they are native Jews, Russians or Israelis, their loss is an unacceptable tragedy on two grounds. One, we are too tiny a people to suffer a loss of such magnitude. Two, there is no reason for them to be cheated out of a rich heritage that belongs to them, just because the current modes of Jewish life do not resonate with them.
There is a need for a new form of Jewish education fashioned for the 21st century which will boldly teach and learn without reference to past and current denominational lines, nor with reference to the religious/secular divide – Jewish Education Without Borders.
While traditional Jewish teaching must continue formally and informally, for children and adults, in the existing institutions of Jewish life (indeed, it must be intensified to combat the illiteracy that is rampant even at the centre), a creative challenge exists to establish and nurture truly pluralistic educators who can stand proud in their own beliefs and yet be open to new Jewish portals that will appeal to those who are now indifferent, distant, or disaffected.
Jewish literacy is life-critical to a creative future that adapts Judaism to the challenges of every age. Our strength has always been our ability to adapt. We transformed ourselves from an enslaved people to landowners in Canaan. We turned a Babylonian captivity into a learned Jewish community that flourished in Iraq for centuries. Once the Second Temple was destroyed, we changed from a central sacrificial cult based in Israel into a religion practised locally in thousands of communities around the world. And after the destruction of European Jewry in the Shoah, we built the “Start-Up Nation.”
Behind every one of these transformations were Jewish consciences filled with values, texts, and a sense of historical destiny. Even when we were challenged intellectually, culturally, and politically by the enlightenment, our varied responses were based on profound knowledge of our sources. Even those who rejected the traditions knew what they were leaving behind.
The Jews of Israel have already ventured into the domain of pluralist education by creating centres of Jewish learning which do not have a religious base and which attract students and teachers from a variety of different camps. Here in North America we have some centres of pluralist education. Academic Jewish studies at universities, community schools and camps, and some communal programs are functioning in the right direction. But much more is needed for all ages.
Jewish leaders must first recognize the problem by pro-actively searching for Jews on the periphery and listening to their voices. This process is the opposite of kiruv, the technique used by the Orthodox to attract new adherents to traditional Judaism. Whether it works or not for the Orthodox is a question, but it is not what is required for the population I have described.
The goal of Jewish Education Without Borders is not to attract distant Jews to institutions they do not respect, but rather to help them find new modes of Jewish life that are meaningful to them. North American Jewish life was built by immigrants and it became the most powerful Diaspora in Jewish history. Its great institutions, movements, and organizations were designed for Jews who mostly no longer exist. And they were designed new and fresh to meet the cultural, spiritual, and communal needs of those early generations in North America. The future, if there is to be one, must be built with the same creativity and sense of destiny that created the Jewish life we were raised on. But, new yet-to-be-built domiciles of Jewish life and fresh paths we have not yet paved will form that future.
Do I honestly believe that a Judaism severed from the traditions of belief and ritual has any long-range future? I doubt it, believing Jew that I am, but the modern age has given us a variety of Jewish lifestyles and we dare not give up on thousands of Jews who are disappearing. They must find their own portals and those gates will not necessarily look like ours. A new kind of Jewish teacher must exist to help them via Jewish literacy. Jewish education has always been the strategic plan of the Jewish people. The goal for all of us is pride and courage; pride in the Jewish achievements of the past and courage to work together towards a creative future.
I was recently asked: “If we build it will they come?” My answer: “If we build it they will not come, but if they build it, some will come.”
Seymour Epstein, is a teacher at York University and was the director of Toronto’s Board of Jewish Education at UJA Federation.