I was surprised and disappointed to see you print the old-school canard that the liberal streams of Judaism will inevitably disappear due to intermarriage, with only Orthodoxy thriving in the future (“The Jewish Future, in Black and White,” October 16). This outcome has been predicted for decades with no tangible proof that it’s happening.
Since your opinion article’s author, Uzi Silber, is aware of some of the statistics from the 2000-01 National Jewish Population Survey, I recommend that he dig deeper into that study, which showed that no denomination sheds more Jews than Orthodoxy: Only 41% of those surveyed who were raised Orthodox still consider themselves Orthodox today.
That is a cumulative number and is affected by many factors, and indeed Orthodox communities may be better at retaining their young people into older adulthood today than 30 years ago. But there are no demographic statistics to prove that. So even if there are 192 Orthodox children for every 100 Orthodox adults, the unspoken reality is that many of those children are going to grow up to find spiritual homes in the other streams of Judaism.
More importantly, it is offensive for Silber to refer to all children of intermarriage as “half-Jewish.” If some children of intermarriage want to refer to themselves as a “half-Jew” or “half-Jewish,” I fully support their self-identification as such. But children of intermarriage are Jews if they want to be, period, and many identify as simply Jewish and find it offensive to be called otherwise.
Considering that children of intermarriage now outnumber children of in-marriage, the Jewish community should exercise greater language sensitivity and better judgments about our words. Otherwise we turn people off completely from our community, and that is really the only way Silber’s vision will be fulfilled.
Paul Golin
Associate Executive Director
Jewish Outreach Institute
New York, N.Y.
Your October 9 article “A Virtual Home for Poland’s Vanished Jews” quoted Sigmund Rolat as describing the March of the Living as “a march of death” where “kids come to Poland for three days, and they see the triangle of death: Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek.” Rolat goes on to explain his belief that while “important,” that alone is “not enough.” “That’s only one chapter of the history,” he said. “They should also find out where Jews lived, where they thrived, where they accomplished so much.”
As the director of the BJE March of the Living delegation in Los Angeles, I have led nearly one thousand high school teenagers from Los Angeles through Poland and Israel on the March of the Living for the past five years. I must respectfully disagree with Rolat’s opinion. First, to clear up a misconception, each year we spend six to seven days in Poland during the March. Yes, we tour Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek, but we also share Shabbat services with the small but thriving Jewish community in Warsaw, walk through the gorgeous streets of downtown Lublin and engage in community service projects with Polish Catholic high school teenagers, many of whom have never had interactions with members of the Jewish community.
I appreciate what Rolat is attempting to do in Poland with the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. However, I must point out that his misconception of the March of the Living does not allow for any appreciation of the time and energy spent carefully crafting an itinerary that both celebrates and commemorates Polish Jewry. Our goals include personalizing the Holocaust, celebrating the life that was and is today, and exploring the implications of all of those things for the future.
Monise Neumann
Director
BJE March of the Living
Los Angeles, Calif.
Paul Golin believes that "the Jewish community should exercise greater language sensitivity and better judgments about our words", because there is a fear that "we turn people off completely from our community". This is no time for PC. It is a time of crisis, and hence this is a time of blunt directness. If someone feels that intermarrige is a serious threat to the continuity of Jewish community life - then it should be said loud and clear. Problems have to be discussed in the bluntest of terms. And in utter bluntness, I have to like to say that the phenomenon of intermarriage is an expression of the total loss of Jewish distinctiveness in North America. Jewish identity cannot be passed on without some clear distinctiveness separating Jews from others. Since Jews are not different from others, they marry these others. Intermarriage isn't the problem in its own right; rather, it is the key to understanding the real problem of American Jewry: the complete adoption of the identity of the American people.
The NJPS , especially the 2000-2001 version, is unfortunately biased against Orthodoxy-whether Modern Orthodox or Charedi. Unfortunately, a professional supporter of intermarriage would never reveal that the survey seemingly is grossly ignorant of the growth of sizeable Modern Orthodox and Charedi communities across North America.
Paul's comments are laughable. that number referred to a generation when anyone who went to an Ortho shul called themselves Orthodox. they weren't practicing Orthodoxy. this is much like many Jews in England or SA today - is someone who is NOT SHomer SHabbat Orthodox? certainly not by today's standard, but definitely yes then. so the 41% has nothing to do with today and the JOI's analysis is proved hollow once again. facts are that intermarriage hardly even leads to Jewish identity being sustained, and the NJPS, AJC reports, Dr Steven Cohen and Dr Sylvia Barak FIshman all revealed this in their studies.
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