The good doctor is concerned that American Jews are fleeing institutionally-defined Judaism because he himself has a considerable personal stake in the institution. If my kids (and all their peers) abandon Conservative Judaism, then Dr. Jack and his JTS colleagues are going to have a hell of a time figuring out who's going to pay their pensions. No wonder so many good Jewish scholars are opting for careers in secular universities!

The whole assumption that one needs to have only one identity, and that identity has to be "Jewish" in the way that our self-selected Jewish "leaders" proscribe is ludicrous. Judaism is whatever the Jews do. If God doesn't like it, He'll let us know, but Dr. Jack isn't the voice of God.

The whole business of pick one "identity" and one religion is nonsense. All of us Jews have two identities, one involved with our political loyalty, another involved with our religion, plus lots of sub-identities related to our family, profession, interests, etc. So I'm first of all and American, owing political allegiance to the USA (which I interpret as allowing me to be simultaneously disgusted at the political leaders to whom I owe allegiance), I'm a Jew, but I'm also a member of two families (the one that gave me birth, as well as the one that I have established), but I also identify with my profession, and with the activities that really make my life worth living, among which is the simple act of sitting on my porch on a warm summer's evening and appreciating God's creation without any bullshit intellectualizing. So there you go. Even a good ethnic Conservative Jew (I even keep kosher and Shabbos and I went out of my way to marry a Jewish woman) like me has multiple identities, and if you really got inside my head, my religion would be different from Dr. Jack's.

Dr. Jack has been harping on this sort of stuff for a while, and I've been blogging on it:

http://cj-heretic.blogspot.com/2007/01/clueless-jack-wertheimer-on-jewish.html
http://cj-heretic.blogspot.com/2005/10/rabbi-jack-takes-on-feminazis-and.html