NATIV Online        

 Vol. 8 / Oct. 2005 / Tishrei 5766           A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE ARTS

 

BOOK REVIEW

Manfred Gerstenfeld’s

American Jewry’s Challenge
Rowman and Littlefeld, 2004

 Book Review by Shalom Freedman

Manfred Gerstenfeld a veteran international business consultant, with a lifelong involvement in Jewish communal affairs is as much a man of action as thought.

In the past decade he has published a series of books that aim to contribute not only to the Jewish people’s understanding of their situation in the world but to their capacity to work to improve it. In the first of these works, Gerstenfeld interviewed, soon after the signing of the Oslo Agreement, 16 prominent Israelis all of whom were affiliated with either the Labor or Likud parties and thus not at the political fringes of the society. His aim was to provide what he called a “snapshot of the society at a particular time”. Fifteen years later he would conclude that the great value of this work was in part that not a single of these mainstream Israeli figures understood the devastating role the anti-Semitic and hate-filled Palestinian educational system was having regarding any possible reconciliation with Israel. Gerstenfeld maintains that had the Israelis understood the Palestinian educational system they would have known Oslo was doomed to failure from the beginning.

In 1996, Gerstenfeld did another collection of interviews, and in these, he exposed the myth that Europe, after the Shoah, ceased being anti-Semitic. He showed that the seeming surge of European anti-Semitism in the last five years was merely a blowing-on-the-coals of a fire that was already burning.

Now in American Jewry’s Challenge, Gerstenfeld interviews 17 prominent Americans and makes a 2003 “snapshot in time” of the situation of American-Jewry. This snapshot comes after what he calls a series of “mega-events” which transformed the political and, in time, the social landscape of American Jewry. The first of these is the Palestinian violence against Israel that renewed in full force on Rosh HaShanah 2000. The second, was 9/11 – the murder of thousands of Americans by Islamic terrorists. The third, was the US invasion of Iraq and dethroning of Saddam Hussein. The fourth is the worldwide upsurge in anti-Semitism that occurred during this time.

These mega-events caused an upheaval in the perception and thought of American Jewry. Gerstenfeld was quick to sense the change and almost immediately began carefully choosing communal leaders and intellectuals who could provide perspective on what was happening in American-Jewish society during this time.

In an informative 100 page introductory essay, Gerstenfeld outlines the main findings of the work. He discusses the well-known demographic problems of the American Jewish community: low fertility, high intermarriage and assimilation, as well as the rapid aging of the population. He mentions what Daniel Pipes calls “the end of the Golden Age of American Jewry”, with the rise of a rapidly growing rival community – the Muslim minority. He also considers the new relationships between Israel, supporting Evangelicals and the largely liberal-left American Jewish community. He considers the relationship to Israel on the part of American Jews and sees a strengthening in their relationship to the Jewish state. In addition, he touches upon what has become one of the major problematic areas for American Jewry – an area where, ideally, their weight should be felt and yet is not – the American college campus. He talks about the Left’s veering away from traditional positions and becoming a fierce opponent of the Jewish state. However he does not discuss what, at the time of the book’s writing, had not yet happened, the High Church, Presbyterian-led movement for disinvestment from Israel. He also ponders voting numbers looking ahead to the 2004 election, and sees that 48% of Jews are thinking of Bush. In fact it later turned out that only some odd 20% did, and that the Jews continued to vote for liberal-left candidates no matter how apparently inimitable they are to Jewish communal interests.

He also considers the changing patterns of US Jewish philanthropy with younger Jews contributing less proportionately to specifically Jewish causes. He also touches upon the role of the synagogue and denominationalism in providing Jewish identity and continuity. He underlines the importance of the growth of Jewish religious educational frameworks for younger people. He too considers the general American trend of declining voluntarism and its effect on the American-Jewish community.

And he touches upon the high financial cost of belonging to the Jewish community. He also seeks to define those issues that he, and his interviewees believe will be on the agenda of the American-Jewish world in the decades to come. And this of course, with the hope of helping provide a framework for strategies that will better enable the community to successfully work at these problems in the future.

The 17 people he interviewed and their subjects are:

Norman Podhoretz: Countervailing Trends in American Jewry

Alan Dershowitz: Unprepared Jewish Leadership and Radical Change

Gary Rosenblatt: Change and Perplexity

David Harris: Confronting Existential Questions

Malcolm Hoenlein: A Community Seeking Unity through Consensus

Stuart Eizenstat: The Activism of American Jews and Restitution

Abraham Foxman: The Resuscitation of Anti-Semitism

Marvin Hier: Building a Major Organization from Scratch

Daniel Pipes: The End of American Jewry's Golden Era

Shoshana Cardin: Community versus Individualism

Rela Mintz Geffen: Sociological Changes in the Community

David Ellenson: New Concepts for Teaching Reform Rabbis

Ismar Schorsch: Indicators of Spiritual Renaissance

Norman Lamm: Changes in Modern Orthodoxy

Richard Joel: Revitalizing Hillel

Carole Solomon: National and International Responsibilities

Mark Charendoff: At the Core of the Funding Revolution

There is a Foreword by Jonathan Sarna and an Afterword by Alan Mittleman.

One clear dichotomy that many of the essays touch upon is the growing strength in terms of Jewish education of a minority core-community, and the increasing Jewish ignorance of an assimilating minority. Perhaps it is true to say that never have there been so many “learned Jews and learning Jews in America” and so many Jews who are absolutely ignorant of their tradition. As for the positive element, the Orthodox world with its network of day schools has been for years the leading element. But an encouraging note is given by the growth of Conservative and also, to a lesser degree, Reform Jewish educational institutions. This growth of education gives the Denominational leaders Norman Lamm, Ismar Schorsch, and David Ellenson the hope of a spiritual revival in America.

Yet the opposite pole is the prevailing note for the great majority. This great majority seems increasingly remote from any sense of Jewish peoplehood, any sense of Jewish communal obligation, and with this any sense of obligation to the well- being of Israel. For a great part of the younger generation of American Jews – those still willing to let themselves be called Jews – their Jewishness is not about what they can give to others. As Sylvia Barack Fishman points out in her most recent study on Jewish intermarriage in America, the overwhelming majority of those think of their Jewishness as a means to personal meaning and identity. It is not about what their being Jewish can give to the Jewish people, but what about their association with a Jewish community or culture can give to them individually. In this, American Jews fit in perfectly with the general trend of American society. Gerstenfeld, in this regard, cites the by-this-time classic work Bowling Alone which shows that the Americans of today do not have less and less connection with voluntary organizations even in terms of their own leisure time activities.

This critical turn to the personal and individual does not bode well for the community’s strength in providing future vital political support to Israel. In his interview, Alan Dershowitz faults American Jewish leadership for being uneducated and unprepared to deal with the attacks being made on Israel. Carole Solomon speaks about how unprepared Jewish young people have been when facing the onslaught of anti-Israel propaganda. And she suggests that communal leaders have to understand that providing religious and day-school education is not enough, but that Jewish young people must be taught about the history and society of Israel. On the other hand, Alan Mittleman, in his Afterword, sees that the “mega-events” have made American Jewish leaders understand that they must be more open to coalitions with conservative American groups; must be more realistic in regard to expecting peace with Palestinians. But of course Mittleman’s words were written under the influence of 9/11 and without any awareness that in May 2005, American Jewish leaders would be on their feet applauding, almost unanimously, Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s plan for one-sided disengagement.

Aside from urging that Israel’s case be made “more efficiently” in America by what he calls “defense organizations”, Manfred Gerstenfeld makes a number of suggestions on how to strengthen the Israel-Jewish-American connection. He speaks of the importance of “mega-donors” in initiatives to strengthen the Jewish community. He sees that new small organizations might be the key to being more effective on campus. And he emphasizes the importance of “mobilizing the Jewish grassroots” to greater activism. But he also suggests that long-term demographic trends are not going to be overturned “overnight” and that there is great work to do in the years ahead.

The situation of American Jewry, as outlined in this work, is thus extremely problematic but not without considerable reasons for hope. Among many suggestions for improving the situation scattered throughout the work, are those which advocate more intense education about Israel and Jewish history in American-Jewish schools, including religious schools. In this regard, the present work does not explore in any detail the important phenomenon of ultra-Orthodoxy in America. There are those who point to the vast increase in Jewish Studies programs on university campuses. Other elements are the singular efforts of outstanding individuals. Gerstenfeld lauds the exemplary behavior of Rachel Fish who took on the Middle East Studies establishment and induced Harvard to cancel the appointment of an anti-Semitic professor. Gerstenfeld mentions the “Birthright Program” which has brought thousands of young American Jews to Israel, for a quick acquaintance with the country. This program is now being supplemented by the “Masua Program” which will bring young American Jews to Israel for much longer periods of time; and this, when it is clear that a first priority for the Jewish people should be providing for its young people as much of a Zionist education as possible.

All in all, the alarming trend outlined in the book of American-Jews’ “dropping out” from communal responsibility presents the greatest challenge of all to its Jewish leadership. To connect more and more individual Jews to their communal and historical responsibility is the true challenge of the Jewish future. This too requires bucking the trend of greater distance between American and Israeli Jewry.

It is to be hoped that this illuminating volume will be a real contribution in moving the Jewish world and its leadership toward meeting the challenge of providing greater Jewish strength and solidarity in the future.  


Shalom Freedman is a freelance writer in Jerusalem with a long-time interest in American-Jewish communal and cultural life.