The State of the Jews

Last week, I argued that Taglit-birthright israel is an astonishing, unexpected success, but that the communities that send their young people to it have failed them by neglecting any follow-up programming. Thus, the experience doesn’t get a chance to transform into a long-term identity-building relationship with the Jewish world.

Rabbi Daniel S. Brenner, who directs one of the largest post-birthright programs in North America, begs to differ.

The JPost published a short letter from him. I’m publishing the full text (which he emailed me).

Post-birthright programs, he says, are “invisible” beside the thousands of birthright buses crisscrossing Israel. But they’re there, and they’re huge.

Birthright Israel’s Post-Trip Doubling Effect

Rabbi Daniel S Brenner

In his opinion piece on December 30th, 2009 Haviv Rettig Gur writes regarding Taglit- Birthright Israel “these connections are wasted if they are not directed at new Jewish experiences back home.” He ends the piece with a short question: “Where’s the follow-up?”

The work of “follow-up” is not as apparent to the public eye as the sight of hundreds of Taglit- banner buses on Israel’s roads. But since I have the pleasure of working with a young staff who have succeeded in providing new Jewish experiences to over fifty thousand Taglit-Birthright Israel alumni in North America during the past year, I have the opportunity to see the follow-up every day. Here is one example:

In 2009, the total number of Taglit-Birthright Israel North American trip participants for 2009 was just shy of 19,000. In the last few months, we have worked with volunteer leaders from those buses to host over 12,200 young adults for home-hospitality Shabbat meals in North America. 93% of our NEXT Shabbat meals involved some or all of the core ritual elements of Shabbat. More importantly, we found that nearly every volunteer felt that this was a positive Jewish communal experience and wanted to host again and get more involved in their local community. By the end of 2010, volunteers from this group of 19,000 trip participants will have hosted over 30,000 young adults for a NEXT Shabbat event.

This particular program is one of four areas of focus for Birthright Israel NEXT that begin on the trip and flow naturally into involvement post-trip (the others being Hebrew language learning, deepening the Israel connection and encouraging community involvement). In addition to the Shabbat program, Birthright Israel NEXT runs ulpanim for young adults in ten North American cities, works with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through local consulates in select cities to deepen ties to Israel, and has involved thousands of post-college young Jewish adults by partnering with local Jewish and Israel-focused organizations (we linked up with thirty-two such organizations in the last year). It is through these four areas (and through many partners) that we are on track to involve 100,000 young Jewish adults in our programming in 2010.

These figures do not count the “ramping up” of programs from our on campus partner Hillel and from our colleagues at MASA, two organizations who have certainly devoted significant energy to “Birthright follow-up” in the last two years. Nor do they include the work of forward-thinking Federations, like the CJP in Boston, that have adopted new models on campus that are delivering follow-up success.

Gur asks the right questions, but I would like to offer a counter-analysis. Those young adults who go on Taglit-Birthright Israel trips and then get involved in Birthright Israel NEXT or with campus-based partners are actually doubling and in many cases quadrupling the overall impact of the trip. In our programs, we see young Jewish women and men come off of their Israel trips with a spark of energy that causes them to reach out to their friends (most of whom have not gone to Israel) and involve them in Jewish life. As a result they are transforming their social circles and injecting Jewish content and Jewish experiences in ways that they never did before. Our job at NEXT is to work within these social circles and to provide critical initial steps that will help grow sparks into new commitments. Those commitments, however, ultimately require the active engagement of young adults by the entire Jewish community. We hope to partner with many more community-based organizations, both established and emerging, as we continue to grow.

Although it is often unseen, Taglit-Birthright Israel participants are quietly transforming their generation in North America and every Jewish organization has the potential to benefit from their renewed passion for Israel and for Jewish life.

Rabbi Daniel S. Brenner
Executive Director
Birthright Israel NEXT

Update: The partial interview was replaced with the complete one.

Shameless plug: A conversation on how the Jewish people may be falling apart.

One meeting at a private home + about 85 wealthy Jews + the news that times are rough for the poor and needy Jews of the world = $43 million.

It’s hard not to wonder what Israel would look like if it had that kind of philanthropic culture.

The UJA-Federation of New York raised $43 million at its annual campaign kickoff last week, funding that will go toward Jewish families in need throughout the world.

The fund-raising event held at the home of former Bear Sterns chairman and CEO Alan “Ace” Greenberg and his wife, Kathryn, in Manhattan last Wednesday brought together more than 85 philanthropic and business leaders from the New York Jewish community.

Despite the worldwide recession and the resulting impact on philanthropy, the amount raised by the federation matched the total in 2008, according to Jerry Levin, the chairman of the UJA-Federation of New York and a former CEO and chairman of AOL Time Warner. He said the money raised will have a profound impact on New Yorkers of all backgrounds and on Jews from around the world.

“Perhaps in no other room in this city or country would fewer than a hundred individuals come together to raise this exceptional sum to fund services needed now more than ever,” Levin said at the fund-raiser. “We’re living in extraordinary times, an era already being called the Great Recession. Given these financial conditions, when a number of individuals who have given so generously in the past could not make the same contribution, others in the room stepped forward to give significantly more to raise tens of millions of dollars when those contributions are needed most.”

So claims a brand new American Jewish Committee survey:

The AJC survey revealed that 56% of American Jews would support, and 36% would oppose, United States military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. A year ago, the AJC survey found that 42% would support the U.S. taking military action against Iran, while 47% were opposed.

And, in another sign of heightening concern about Iran’s nuclear program, 66 percent would support, and 28 percent would oppose, Israel taking military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.

On the peace process:

In response to a new AJC survey question, 94% of American Jews agree that the Palestinians should be “required to recognize Israel as a Jewish state in a final peace agreement.”

Demonstrating American Jews’ skepticism of Arab intentions regarding Israel, 75% agree, and 19% disagree, with the statement, “The goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel.” In the 2007 survey, 82% agreed and 12% disagreed.

Nonetheless, regarding the establishment of a Palestinian state, 49% favor that outcome, and 41% are opposed. In AJC’s 2007 survey, 46% were in favor and 43% opposed.

On settlements:

The AJC survey found that a majority, 51% of U.S. Jews, disagree with the Obama Administration’s call for a stop to all new Israeli settlement construction, while 41% agree with that tactic.

Among the denominations, 74% of Orthodox, 62% of Conservative, and 46% of Reform Jews disapprove of the call for a full settlement freeze.

Still, there is wide recognition among American Jews that the question of settlements is a topic to be resolved in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. When put in that context, most American Jews say Israel should be willing to dismantle all (8%) or some (52%) of the settlements as part of a permanent peace settlement with the Palestinians. 37% oppose dismantling any.

Two weeks ago, I commented on how mainstream media misunderstood the Masa brouhaha, thinking that it signified an anti-Israel push by Diaspora Jews. These organizations failed to notice that Masa’s ad campaign was based on what Masa’s Israeli officials genuinely believed were American concerns. They believed their ad campaign involved educating Israelis about American Jewish issues.

It was, I said, a sign of the gap of understanding between the two communities.

Now, Prof. Jack Wertheimer, an important scholar of Jewish identity and community, opines on why Masa was more right than wrong:

In an opinion piece titled “Time for Straight-Talk About Assimilation,” he writes:

While the ad may have been clumsy in its execution, its central point is essentially correct: Large numbers of Jews around the world are disconnected from any Jewish communal activities.

Is there any reason to doubt that the Jewish people is suffering an erosion of its engaged membership? … When we add up all the activities of synagogues, federations, service programs, national organizations, cultural providers, educational institutions and the myriad start-ups, it is clear that vast populations of American Jews are steering clear of organized Jewish life.

Wertheimer also takes issue with the complaint that the concern over intermarriage is mere prejudice:

So why, then, if there is a large kernel of truth to its claims, did the Masa ad elicit such a sharp reaction? In large part, it is because it was inferred that the 50% assimilation figure the ad cited refers to intermarriage rates, which in the United States reached that level in the late 1990s. Critics contend that the ad — though it does not actually mention the word “intermarriage” — gives offense to the children of Jews who intermarry, by implying that they are somehow “lost.” Many children of intermarriage, these critics note, are raised as Jews and go on to identify strongly with the Jewish people. This is, of course, true — but only up to a point. Unfortunately, this optimistic reading describes only a minority of intermarried families. The majority of intermarried families raise their children in a faith other than Judaism or in two faiths or no faith at all; not surprisingly, when they reach adulthood, most of those offspring do not identify as Jews.

In the end, he writes, “this hesitance to grapple seriously with the issue of intermarriage is part of a broader phenomenon: Speaking of threats to Jewish survival has become passé.”

I’m glad Prof. Wertheimer wrote what many in the American Jewish community have surely been thinking. It’s a shame it has not reached a very wide audience, based on the circumstantial evidence of Google search results.

In case you’re now looking for the ad:

I suppose I should be amazed at the interest shown by major mainstream media outlets on an issue that, ultimately, is about the complexity of Jewish identity in our age. But I’m not.

Reading CNN and a Guardian opinion piece today, I realized why the Masa story generated such interest: The response to Masa was being read, and written, as a blowback against Israel from Diaspora Jewry. It is a crisis in which Israel itself, rather than a handful of educators at Masa, is the target of criticism. Now that’s a whole new level of interesting, no?

CNN writes that:

Critics say this campaign ultimately exposed what is sometimes seen as the disconnect between the Jews of Israel and their counterparts around the world: the assumption that Israeli Jewish authorities are the only ones to determine what is truly Jewish.

I assume “critics” means me, and yes, I thought it reflected the disconnect between Israel and American Jewry.

But why is the disconnect described as “the assumption that Israeli Jewish authorities are the only ones to determine what is truly Jewish?” That could fairly be said about Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar’s end-run around American Orthodox conversions – but about Masa?

If anything, the Masa campaign was a bunch of Israelis saying what they believed Americans wanted to hear! I know firsthand that they are still reeling from shock at the response of large numbers of American Jews.

As for the Guardian, its Comment is Free section printed a fascinating and slightly disturbing piece by one Dimi Reider subtitled “A controversial ad focusing on the ‘assimilation’ of Jews fails to accept the reality that you don’t have to be Israeli to be Jewish.”

There’s that Israeli cultural hegemony rearing its ugly head yet again.

It begins – true to form – with an exposition on the ideological errors of Zionism:

The crux and core of Israel’s existence is realising the project of auto-emancipation; in other words, to emancipate Jews in what in the late 19th century appeared to be the bright future of territorial nationalism. The means to that was establishing the Jews as a distinct nation, rather than a culture or a faith present in a variety of territorial nations; and endowing this nation with its own territorial sovereignty.

Today, 112 years after the first Zionist Congress, there are at any given time more Jews outside Israel than inside it, despite murderous ethnic cleansing in Europe, forced-emigration ethnic cleansing in some Arab states and the very real, modern antisemitism that most Jews in the diaspora continue to experience. In other words, many Jews still don’t see their Judaism as a package deal with an Israeli passport or residency.

…

Even the argument that migrating to Israel is the only way to keep your identity rings strange, because Jewish identity is often a lot more pronounced when living among non-Jews – both in a desire to maintain identity and in the give-and-take with other people, other cultures and other creeds.

All this is not recognised by the ideology behind the ad. Even though most Jewish cultural strands – Talmud, Hassidism, Yiddish, Haskala and Zionism, to name a few – were born in constant friction and interaction with the non-Jewish world. People-fishers such as the Journey Project see 2,200 years of Jewish diaspora as a historic error that needs to be forgotten and bulldozed as we go back to our “normal” state of purist nationhood.

…

Mixed marriages, rather than decline of antisemitism and exclusivist nationalism, are seen here as the reason for the ever-dwindling Jewish migration to Israel, our main resource against the “Arab demographic threat”.

…

It’s worth noting that life for a mixed family in Israel is very difficult – not only because the education system and society is intolerant towards non-Jews, but simply because acquiring citizenship and legal rights for non-Jews is unbelievably complex, even if their partners are Jewish Israelis.

The ad was hastily scrapped less than a week after it was launched; Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky needed few reminders that a third of his home constituency, Russian-speaking Israelis, are either partners or products of mixed marriages of the kind targeted by the ad.

Where to begin? The only reason there are more Jews outside Israel than inside is, well, America – which accounts for some 80% of the Diaspora. There’s a good reason for this: Just about every other Jew in the world was either killed during the 20th century or, if they were a bit luckier, became Israeli. With the minor (demographically) exception of Britain and a handful of tinier communities, Zionism was unfortunately accurate in predicting – and readying for – the near-total ethnic cleansing of Jews from Africa, Asia and Europe, whether (before Israel) through genocide or (after Israel) through expulsion and flight.

Even France, today the third-largest community of Jews in the world, is largely composed of North African refugees fleeing into a country emptied of its Jews by the Holocaust – hardly a stinging critique of the Zionist narrative.

So I hope Reider can forgive the Zionists their skewed perception of the Diaspora – Israelis are more or less the last major Jewish population to survive the Eastern Hemisphere’s 20th-century purges. Only in the English-speaking world did Jews survive without the Zionist movement having to rescue them.

As for the ideology behind Masa, of course, Reider is extrapolating wildly and irrelevantly. Visiting Israel has a profound effect on Diaspora Jewish youth – even those who are not deeply connected to Jewish religious and cultural life. Study after study has shown that birthright israel, for example, has a strong positive effect on Jewish affiliation across the board – whether religious, cultural, ethnic, you name it.

And he can rest easy: these newly-affiliated young people almost never make aliya. (I explain why here.)

So if aliya is the goal of programs like birthright or Masa, they have failed miserably. If they see “Jewish diaspora as a historic error” then they should shut down, because the net effect of their work is to strengthen it.

As for Sharansky’s “home constituency,” the vast majority of these would likely support the ad enthusiastically. They do not tend to share the profoundly individualistic structure of identity Reider seems to espouse, and most say they’d prefer to convert into the Israeli Jewish collective. The fact that they can’t is another agony-filled story of rabbis and intra-Orthodox competition which is best left for another day.

As for Israeli society’s intolerance toward non-Jews – I’ll generously put that comment down to Reider’s British milieu. It seems it’s hardly possible to get published in the Guardian without at least one throw-away comment about Israeli racism.

To sum up, the Masa fiasco has been a particularly fascinating canvas on which different kinds of Jews have painted their particular pictures. For Americans, they have lashed out at the misunderstanding of the assimilation problem, which calls for outreach and education, not, as the ad suggested, national mobilization. For the Israelis, most of whom have never given Diaspora identity much thought, it’s been a lesson in the simple fact that massive Diaspora Jewish civilizations exist. For CNN, it’s been a crisis ripe for MSM-style misunderstanding. For at least one British Jew, it’s been one more instance of Israeli state aggression and cultural hegemony.

Hey, on matters of Jewish identity, to each his own, right?

By the way, it’s worth noting that the anger at Masa was hardly universal. To describe “assimilated” Jews as “lost” is a legitimate statement of values, especially if the ad makes explicit that they are lost “to us,” to the community. It’s not as though they will burn in hell for leaving the church, just that they will not be Jews in a generation. Is it so wrong for an educational program to take its cues from American Jewry and set about trying to reverse that?

Discuss.