The Big Question

From: Gideon Aronoff
To: John Derbyshire
Subject: The Exodus Impulse and the Sinai Impulse

John,

Allow me to correct your misconception (shared by several commenters) that I support illegal immigration in any way. I do not. I am in favor of a system that includes security measures to keep dangerous people out while offering opportunities to become part of our country to those who came here to work and support their families, but entered or stayed illegally.

They need to be made to do the right thing – and that includes paying fines, getting to the back of the line, learning English, and so on – but we have to create a realistic “line” rather than this mishmash of a system that we currently have. Let’s make it work and end illegal immigration. I’m still optimistic enough to believe that we as a country can do just that.

Now, as I wrap up this exchange about where Jews should stand on immigration, I'll focus on the key points that have divided us:

I believe that Jews are and should be parochial and universal at the same time. This understanding is well articulated by Rabbi Sidney Schwartz in his book Judaism and Justice: The Jewish Passion to Repair the World when he writes:

“The Jewish tradition’s universal teachings about responsibility toward all human beings and to the entire world continue to bring us back to the needed equilibrium between self-interest – the Exodus impulse – and the interests of humanity – the Sinai impulse. Even when, or perhaps especially when, the Jewish world tends toward the parochial, there are voices in our midst that call us back to our prophetic legacy to be agents for the repair of the entire world.”

My awareness of this interplay between Judaism’s Exodus and Sinai impulses frames my reading of Kevin MacDonald—even if it isn’t the framework from which MacDonald writes. I don’t think Jews need to be ashamed of watching out for our own parochial interests—the Exodus impulse.

I am proud of Jewish contributions to fighting the immigration restrictions that MacDonald describes. And I am particularly proud that in taking steps to benefit our community, we also were able to express the universal value of human dignity—our Sinai imperative—through our opposition to nationality-based quotas that were harmful to so many people and to our country as well. Pascal aside, I think that from a Jewish perspective we can and must be fully particularist and fully universal at the same time.

Though it is true that one can find any number of polls on the Internet to support any claim, I put most stock in established organizations such as Zogby, CBS-New York Times, and USA-Today. Their results show that the country is overwhelmingly supportive of a comprehensive approach to immigration reform.

Just a few weeks ago ABC News published a poll saying that 58 percent of Americans are in favor of allowing undocumented immigrants to stay if they paid fines and met other requirements. This summer a CNN-Opinion Research Corporation poll also found that most people did indeed favor comprehensive immigration reform. More than half of the people polled by NBC News-Wall Street Journal said they’d be disappointed if Congress did not pass immigration reform legislation. I could go on. I stick with my assertion that the majority are on our side. So it is naturally frustrating to have the issue taken off the table in Congress because the opposition minority was more successful at emailing, calling and faxing.

As for the economic arguments, of course there are economic pluses and minuses to immigration. But I believe the minuses can be mitigated by biting the bullet and creating a new system where legality and control are achieved through a federal comprehensive plan that includes legalization, enforcement, future legal flows, and integration.

Additionally, what I take away from Rabbi Sacks is not that the economy is irrelevant —it is crucial and he has written eloquently about both the challenges of a global economy and the virtues of the market. But we shouldn’t fetishize economic or other forms of power over individual freedom and dignity. My initial statement of Jewish immigration needs in my first e-mail was, in my mind, an example of the combined Sinai and Exodus imperatives, and placed economics in the full context of security, culture, practical necessity, and so on.

Next, let me correct the point on diversity. I wasn’t disagreeing that diversity is a worthy goal, only that immigration and integration are different areas of public policy and both deserve attention. Moreover, I was arguing that policies to promote diversity in immigration are, in my view, much better served by my proposals and that a renewed focus on integration—or assimilation—of newcomers will allow us to get the benefits from diversity while incorporating this diverse population into our common national objectives.

Regarding the comments about deportation—there has to be a better way forward for our country than to deport mothers, fathers, husbands and wives of families who are not here legally, and force the U.S. citizen and legal immigrant members of the families—often children—to make the inhumane and heartbreaking choice to separate from their loved ones or their country (the U.S.A). Separating families with mixed status, or making them choose to leave behind everything they’ve built for themselves over the years, is certainly legally permissible, but is not the way we should be treating millions of people.

I agree that we should always be seeking ways to improve our refugee system—we should work to improve all aspects of our government and our society. But to essentially shut down refugee protection is an extreme and callous response, particularly when based on misapplying the European example. U.S. and European immigration and integration policies are markedly different.

Bruce Bawer, who strives in his 2006 book While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within to sound the alarm about the impact of failed policies in Europe still concludes:

“America views its immigrants as potential assets, Americans in the making, the next wave of bearers of the American dream; Europe views them as needy cases, wards of the state. America treats them as individuals, who, though welcome to retain aspects of their cultures of origin, are expected to think of themselves as free, self-determining Americans; Europe treats them as members of an ethnic and religious group and is less interested in their self-realization as individuals than in the preservation, in Europe, of their group’s customs.”

Finally, on the Senate bill: I don’t have contempt for the American people. I recognize the stresses that immigration can cause, and believe that the restrictionist camp includes people motivated by these real concerns as well as others who are motivated by racial and ethnic prejudice. When we in the immigrant rights camp paint our opponents with broad strokes and fail to make distinctions, we are guilty of the same sins of which we often, accurately, accuse our opponents.

However, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which monitors and reports on the activities of far-right extremists, has issued a valuable report in Extremists Declare ‘Open Season’ on Immigrants that notes that extremists continue to focus their energies on Hispanic hate-mongering through racist rhetoric, crude stereotypes, and threats of using violence to intimidate illegal immigrants.

“As we have gotten deeper into the discussion on immigration, the white supremacist movement has reinvigorated itself and closed ranks around the cause of fighting immigration and turning America into a nation for ‘Whites only,’” says Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director. “The immigration debate has provided the perfect storm for America’s white supremacist fringe to recruit, organize and sow the seeds of racial discord and hate.” Not all restrictionists hold these views, but it is a warning that we need to take seriously.

I share your opinion that the Senate bill was flawed. That's why it was opposed not just by immigration restrictionists but also by many hard-core advocates of immigrant rights. Ultimately it was killed by too much opposition from immigration restrictionist forces and too little support from the immigrant rights community. As a pragmatist, I concluded that it was better to work from this flawed model than to destroy it. I still believe that it could have been improved and that it was better than what we now have.

Unfortunately, what we now have is continued illegality and the exploitation of workers who are in this vulnerable status; more deaths of migrants in the desert; an ever coarsening political debate; an abdication of federal leadership on a major national issue; raids that are separating families and disrupting communities; and a hodgepodge of local responses that can cause trauma for immigrant families but cannot solve our immigration problems, or take the place of the wise and just legal immigration system that our country desperately needs.

We—and here I speak with my Jewish, American and American Jewish identities— can definitely do better. Let’s roll up our sleeves and get back to work.

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John,

Numbers do indeed matter. That’s why I posed questions about criteria and numbers and indicated that we need a rational debate to serve our varied interests and values. But numbers can’t be the whole story if we Jews are to truly address America’s dysfunctional immigration system in a Jewish manner.

Those of us in the Jewish community insist that our public policy prescriptions must defend the core dignity of each human being. The Talmud famously teaches us, “To save one life is as if you have saved the world.” Again to quote Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Britain’s chief rabbi, “Judaism sees society as the arena in which specific ideals are realized: justice, compassion, the rule of law combined with respect for the sanctity of life and the dignity of the individual. The Torah is a unique attempt to create a nation governed not by the pursuit of power or the accumulation of wealth but by recognition of the worth of each person as the image of God.” We Jews take this very seriously, whether or not you do. And this exchange is, after all, about the Jewish take on immigration – and not on whether Kevin MacDonald thinks Jews are misusing immigration policy for nefarious ends.

To focus for the moment on the numbers issues, you use a trusty old technique of diverting attention from the point at hand by using outlandish, even reckless, exaggerations, as in “billions” of people pouring into America. When I say America needs a liberal immigration policy, “liberal” does not equal “open.” No one is arguing that America should admit billions of newcomers. Again I will say that the exact numbers and criteria should be developed through a rational debate in Congress and in American society.

As an American, I find it very distressing to see how a small group of pontificators, who lather up their base with false specters of uncontrolled migration of terrorists, have thus far succeeded in derailing any attempt at a considered, rational approach to the immigration problem. Polls continue to show that a majority of Americans actually want comprehensive immigration reform that includes a realistic path to citizenship for those already here, as well as smart, effective security measures to keep those who want to do us harm out – in short, a system that works for the benefit of America and in keeping with what we as a country purport to be our values.

Staying with the numbers side of the equation, it is crucial to understand that America needs more people to keep our economy running smoothly. This is not mere conjecture – Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says we will need to raise immigration levels to 3.5 million people annually to overcome the effects of an aging population. His predecessor, Alan Greenspan, made the same point repeatedly during his tenure.

The role of immigrants in our economy is now, as it has always been, a well-established plus. Not only in the entrepreneurial world, as I mentioned in the first piece, citing Intel, Google and other companies started by immigrants – but also in the everyday labor force. For the complete picture, we have to look also at the role of immigrants in agriculture, the service sector, technology, the arts and science, where examples of the contributions to America’s success abound.

Ultimately, what matters to the number-crunchers is that the U.S. continues to see real economic benefits from immigration, and that can be documented in a variety of ways. A recent study by the University of California, for example, showed that between 1990 and 2004, native-born wages increased an average of 1.8% as a consequence of immigration. In addition, the study also said that overall annual growth in Gross Domestic Product is approximately 0.1 percentage point higher as a result of immigration, which represents billions of dollars in economic output and, when compounded across a generation, represents a significant improvement in the standard of living of our children and grandchildren. Dan Siciliano, executive director of Stanford Law School’s Program in Law, Economics and Business, says “the evidence continues to mount in favor of the conclusion that immigration is good for economy, good for jobs, and a critical part of our nation’s future prosperity.”

I would like to now return to a point addressed in my previous response that elicited great disdain and scorn in your reply. While you are skeptical about the value of Torah and Talmud to this debate, we Jews see wrestling with the meaning of Torah as core to what it is to be Jewish. Specifically, on the question of who constitutes a “stranger among us,” you completely ignore the opinion of the identified inspiration for my stance: Orthodox Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who was quoted at some length. Presumably Rabbi Sacks knows something about the meaning of Torah.

I am happy to admit that there is not absolute unanimity in the Jewish world on the meaning of the injunction to welcome the stranger. To be frank, there isn’t this level of unanimity in the Jewish world on anything. However, Rabbi Sacks’ belief of what “a stranger among us” means, is the overwhelming perspective amongst our rabbinate, with fundamental agreement from across the Jewish spectrum. To name just a few, see Rabbi Joshua Maroof (Sephardic); Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal (Conservative); Rabbi Michael Feshbach (Reform); Rabbi Adam Chalom (Humanism); Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb (Reconstructionist); Rabbi Stephen B. Silvern (Renewal); and Rabbi Gershon Winkler (Independent).

As far as calling the notion of a “chosen people” exclusivist – that seems to come from a misinformed gentile understanding of the term – I wouldn’t use the moniker “goyish”. Under our Jewish religion there is a set of obligations that fall upon Jews, who are thus “chosen” to fulfill these obligations. This does not mean that we arrogantly consider ourselves God’s favorites.

Unfortunately, you totally missed my point about the parallelism between waves of Jewish and other immigration. As someone who values people as well as numbers, what I was talking about here was a parallel of motivation, not demographics. I also wanted to point out that prior to the immigration laws of the 1920s, there were essentially no restrictions on immigration (except on the Chinese), so Jews who might today agree with your restrictionist approach should remember that their forebears didn’t necessarily have to break any laws to stay in this country.

But where are the Latin American success stories, you ask. Here’s a recent one, featured by NBC television’s Washington affiliate last week: Alfred Quinones now says he's living proof that not all undocumented workers are laborers, maids and bus boys. He entered this country illegally by climbing a fence along the U.S.-Mexican border, found work picking tomatoes in California, learned English, and later got into U.C. Berkeley, then Harvard Medical School. His U.S. citizenship followed and – 12 years after scaling that fence – he became one of the nation's top neurosurgeons at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, where he is today working to find a cure for brain cancer. He has been called “one of the most accomplished neurosurgeons in the world.”

You can’t predict who’s going to make the greatest contributions, so while the statistics have some value, the patients whose lives are being saved by this illegal immigrant from Latin America don’t give a hoot about some study showing that more European and Asian-born people have started companies here.

You ask why, even with the success stories, we should accept so many people from Latin America – you want diversity. Respectfully, this point makes no sense based on either geography or public policy. The fact that the U.S. has more immigrants from Latin America is a matter of proximity – by and large, people migrate to neighboring places. The fact that Mexicans and Central Americans are such a dominant group is understandable, but not a profound point. We who support comprehensive immigration reform would like to see programs to tie future flows of legal, rather than undocumented, migration, to economic needs – accompanied by effective enforcement measures. This new realistic legal system would promote diversity and fairness because immigrant workers from any part of the world would be able to apply for visas. The advantage of geography would be mitigated.

As far as your answer to how generous we should be to people fleeing persecution – “Not very,” you say. I find this callous response to be contrary to the core Jewish and American traditions. Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, in his The Book of Jewish Values, writes eloquently about the Torah’s injunction that “You shall not turn over to his master a slave who seeks refuge with you from his master.” [Deuteronomy 23:16-17]. I have to say that I am astounded that you would have America turn its back on persecuted victims from Iran, Darfur, Burma, and other vicious regimes and lecture them that they should “reform” their countries. One can certainly oppose fraud – I do – without losing our humanity and our compassion for the oppressed.

You also say that my premise that we can’t practically deport 12 million people is false – again you twist the meaning, and answer a different question – I used the word “practically” deliberately, and stand by the assertion that it would not be practical – regardless of whether or not this has been “costed.” Is “between $41 billion and $46 billion annually over five years” indeed practical to you? More impractical is the notion of trying to remove 12 million people – visions of the trains to Auschwitz come to mind – by the U.S. government. That would be a horror only a truly heartless person would relish. Would it be practical to you to see families of mixed status (again the trains to Poland come to mind) ripped apart? Surely, there’s a better way.

John, since we haven’t had the opportunity to meet in person, I checked out your bio on the web and have to say that I am impressed by your accomplishments since immigrating to the United States. I would count as one of your most important achievements the lesson that you teach (paralleling that of Alfred Quinones) that undocumented migrants – or illegal aliens as you would likely describe yourself – can make valuable contributions to our now common homeland if given a second chance at citizenship. I hope we all learn this lesson well.

Ultimately, I conclude that numbers are part of the essence of the immigration issue, but the essence also has to take in the totality of the interest of all Americans – immigrant and non-immigrant, business and labor, religious, non-religious, conservative, liberal and in-between. I believe we can get there, but only if we work together to make it happen. Our side has from the start been ready for this. Sadly, your side has repeatedly shown quite plainly that it has no such interest. One need only think back to June in the U.S. Congress, when the best opportunity at what would have been at least a start was shot down by your vocal minority. This is tragic for Jewish Americans and all Americans, immigrant and native-born alike.

NEXT: Good for America? Good for Jews? Good for the Whole World??

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From: Gideon Aronoff
To: John Derbyshire
Subject: Old Chestnuts

John,

Immigration restrictionists frequently trot out the old chestnut that American Jews’ attitudes about immigration are mired in a sepia-toned time warp where babushka’d bubbes and wide-eyed zaydes are still hobbling off boats from the old country. This is not, however, a valid description of twenty-first century American Jews’ views on immigration and our complex identities that meld parochial interests, universal Jewish values and our national interests as Americans.

Today, we are witnessing a striking parallel to our own Jewish American history, as Latin Americans, Asians and others clamber to get into America like we did – but this time, because we were ultimately embraced by America, we are mostly part of the established “native” population. We remember that when the massive waves of Jewish immigrants arrived in the U.S. in the late 1800s and early 1900s – if you weren't Chinese – there were essentially no visa requirements, so it was easyStriking Parallels: This is how somebody else's Bubbe got to America to arrive legally. By the early 1920s however, severe restrictions were put in place and Jews began resorting to illegal entry, or were denied access, with tragic consequences during the Holocaust. Today there are only 5,000 visas for low skilled workers – it is therefore not surprising that desperately poor people take life-threatening measures to support their families, even if this runs counter to our immigration laws.

As a Jewish community activist engaged in the struggle to protect refugees and to ensure that immigrants and newcomers are offered welcome and assimilated into our country, I constantly seek to understand the diverse array of goals, hopes, needs and expectations our community has for America’s immigration system.

First, and from the most parochial perspective, Jews have a need for a system that facilitates Jewish immigration, protects Jewish refugees and recognizes that long- and short-term visitors from abroad are important parts of our global Jewish community. (Ten percent of all Jews in America today are foreign born – they are still coming from places where they’re not welcome; they still come to teach in our schools, work in our camps, etc.) That said, to serve this goal, it’s neither moral nor practical to think we can carve out a system that admits Jews but restricts others, slamming the door to America behind us.

Secondly, we have a need for a vibrant economy, now and in the future. While I fully recognize that the economic analysis of the pros and cons of immigration is complex, I come down on the side of the argument that our country needs significant immigration to continue its prosperity.

Since 1990, immigrants have started one out every four U.S. venture-backed public companies. The Kaufman Foundation reports that in 2005, 350 out of 100,000 immigrants started businesses each month; compared to 280 started by native born Americans. In technology the phenomenon is more apparent than in any other sector of the economy. American immigrants founded or co-founded some of the world’s most prominent tech companies, among them Intel, Sun Microsystems, eBay, Yahoo! and Google. Forty percent of companies operating in high-technology manufacturing today were started by immigrants and more than half of the employment generated by these manufacturers has come from immigrant-founded companies.

This pronounced, positive impact of immigration on America’s success is not just apparent in the entrepreneurial statAn Important Part of the Mix: Immigration is good for the economyistics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projected in 2004 that the total employment in service occupations would increase by 19 percent by 2014, second only to professional and related occupations. Half of the 20 occupations anticipating the greatest job growth will require only short-term on-the-job training. During this same period America will need to fill about 25 million job openings (or 45 percent of all vacancies) with workers with a high-school diploma or less.

Third, the Jewish community requires federal policies that enhance community and national security. Jews need real security – not “press release” security. Real security will come from careful analysis, careful policy making and a focus on individuals where evidence shows they may be a threat – and not stereotyping groups such as Latinos, Africans, Middle Easterners or others. It will not come from speeches made in Congress, publicity stunts like the recent campaign to send bricks to elected officials, or partial, “feel-good,” enforcement measures that won’t actually stop undocumented immigration.

Fundamentally, an enforcement-only approach to immigration would be folly – and I find myself in good company when I say that. The Coalition for Immigration Security, a group of former Bush administration security officials, encourages Congress and the administration to enact legislation that provides strong immigration law enforcement coupled with “realistic policies related or our labor markets and economic needs.” The coalition also said in a report last year that undocumented immigrants should be allowed to pay a fine, undergo strict security checks, and “make amends for their mistake without crippling our economy and social structures by being part of a mass deportation. Each day that we fail to bring these people out of the shadows is another day of amnesty by default.”

A fourth core need of American Jews is for immigration policies that promote the integration of newcomers into American culture -- thereby enhancing both our security and our identity. It is essential to remember that integration into American culture is an historic phenomenon that makes the American experience markedly different from that of European countries, where integration is not fostered and where Jews are under siege. Moreover, it’s not inconsistent to call for policies that promote integration of newcomers and, at the same time value the benefits of true American diversity in allowing us to be fully Jewish and fully American.

The fears generated about people from other cultures bringing their antisemitism with them is yet another thinly-veiled example of bigotry trumping sound policy making. While it is true that some immigrants bring the prejudices of their home countries, including antisemitism, second- and third-generation immigrants tend to leave these negative views behind. Why? Because they are becoming fully-integrated Americans.

This alarmist prejudice against recent arrivals is not new to today’s America, it is part of a cycle of nativism that periodically afflicts our country. Our revered Ben Franklin’s own inherent bigotry was evident in 1751 in his “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind”:

“Why should the Palatine boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours?Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of us Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.”

We Americans – all of us – should focus our debate about immigration based on rational analysis rather than irrational judgments about outsiders. We have been shown plenty of examples beyond Franklin’s that, when allowed to truly integrate, all groups do indeed become true Americans – while keeping alive their individual heritages. You can still get a pretty good bratwurst in Pennsylvania today but it’s safe to also say that English is still the predominant language throughout the state.

Finally, while all of these tangible interests are crucial, we must not lose sight of the fact that Jews are a religious and ethical people and the bearers of an ancient tradition. We are taught to internalize the lesson that is repeated throughout the Torah and the Talmud that we must “welcome the stranger,” “not oppress the stranger,” “protect the stranger,” “have one law for the stranger and the citizen among you,” all because “you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

This lesson is most clearly articulated by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Britain’s chief rabbi, who has written:

“Why should you not hate the stranger? – asks the Torah. Because you once stood where he stands now. You know the heart of the stranger because you were once a stranger in the land of Egypt…I [G-d] made you into the world’s archetypal strangers so that you would fight for the rights of strangers – for your own and those others, wherever they are, whatever the colour of their skin or the nature of their culture, because, though they are not in your image – says G-d – they are nonetheless in Mine. There is only one reply strong enough to answer the question: Why should I not hate the stranger? Because the stranger is me.”

That’s why, even in 2007 as most of the world’s most serious hostilities are happening to other groups – refugees fleeing persecution in Iran, innocents enduring chaos and violence in Burma, destitute masses of undocumented migrants risking death to seek opportunity, millions suffering extreme poverty – we Jews still must focus on helping to protect them.

I close with a few questions to ponder: How generous should we be to people who are fleeing persecution? If we practically can’t deport 12 million people, is it better to leave them in the shadows, or create a package of enhanced enforcement, new immigration opportunities, legalization and integration programs? What policies best serve to promote the integration of newcomers? Since we can’t accept everyone in the world, what are the criteria for a controlled, liberal immigration system?

Without doubt there is plenty of room for analysis and debate on the details of these policy questions. But, based on the full range of American Jewish interests and values, I conclude that we Jews must remain deeply engaged with the challenges posed by American immigration and continue to fight the forces of immigration restriction as we seek to create a 21^st century American Jewish movement for immigrants and refugees.

NEXT: But why such favoritism to Mexicans, Gideon?

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From: Jack Wertheimer
To: Joey Kurtzman
Subject: Different Pasts, Different Futures

Well, Joey, I never saw it coming. All your talk about the new age in which we live, the easy movement of people and ideas, the collapse of boundaries between people and the joys of intermarriage. And now when all is said and done, where do we end up? We’re back to the stale arguments between socialists and Zionists about universalism versus particularism that took the Jewish world by storm 100 years ago!

After the horrors of the Gulag, Castro’s hell in Cuba, countless “Great Leaps Forward,” and the defeat ofCold Enough for Ya'?: After the Gulag, socialism still titillates young Jews Communism in most parts of the world by triumphant liberation movements, you want to take us back to the glory days of socialism. After all the oppression and slaughter that Jews—and hundreds of millions of others—have suffered in the socialist paradises, you want to return to the delusions of your grandparents, if not great-grand-parents. They, at least, could claim ignorance about the outcome of the wonderful socialist experiments. You have no such excuse, but harbor the wish that somehow the current century will differ from the last one.

Leaving aside your willful historical amnesia, your retreat into the past is sinful because you are blind to the opportunities presented to you and your generation of Jews today. Instead of working to further the greatest Jewish experiment of the past two millennia, the extraordinary, maddening, exhilarating, confusing, and ultimately heroic Jewish State, you want to experiment with the biggest non-starter of all—“universalized Judaism.” Instead of building a vibrant Jewish community in this country to demonstrate that Jewish life is so vital it can renew itself after the horrors of the Shoah, you want to expend all your energy to return to the nightmare from which people behind the iron curtain awoke barely 15 years ago. The socialism that “once swept Jewish Europe” was a catastrophe for Jews and non-Jews alike, but you want to give it another crack because you imagine the 21st century is ripe, even if the 20th was not.

As I see it, you’ve been suckered, repeatedly. First, you’ve taken to heart the socialist pretensions of your own forebears. Immigrant Jews and their children talked the socialist talk, but did not walk the walk. They did everything in their power to make it in capitalist America. And they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Aside from engaging in sometimes bizarre political behavior, so that as Milton Himmelfarb famously put it, “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans,” the heirs of the socialist Jews are very nicely ensconced in upper middle class America and more than happy to enjoy their comforts.

You were also ripped off by your Jewish school. Instead of offering far more complicated messages about how Jewish observance repairs us and makes us better human beings, your schooling apparently succumbed to the Judaism lite of “Tikkun Olam.” All we have to do is invest in saving the whales or any other cause du jour and presto—we have a sufficient expression of our Judaism. I applaud Jews who want to save whales and do good in the world, but only if they also want to do good for Jewish life too and to live as Jews. Helping others is no substitute for helping one’s own.

And now you are taken in once again by a “prominent philosopher” who wants the middle class to give away a quarter of its income. This proposal is worthy of a debate?! And if most middle class Americans find this unrealistic scheme as absurd as I do, what do you want to do, Joey? Redistribute their income against their will? I sure hope this is not one of those shiny new ideas that, in your view, are “humiliating” Judaism “in the marketplace of ideas.”

Nice to Pigs, Mean to People: Would Peter Singer expropriate our wealth in the name of progress?Rather than dwell on the past, let me suggest where we differ regarding a way forward. You trace the collapse of Jewish engagement to the allure of new ideas. Unfortunately, you don’t let on what those ideas are. As I see it, Jews are drifting away because they are seduced by rampant individualism, which persuades them to do their own thing. Consumerism, bowling alone, finding your bliss are not exactly powerful ideas, even if they are attractive candy. You and I at least share a common belief that Jews ought to care about something beyond themselves. You favor universal concerns; I favor Jewish needs first, followed by some engagement with larger causes. From where I sit, growing numbers of American Jews invest themselves in no causes, neither Jewish nor universal. The marketplace of ideas offers a mighty thin gruel in our time

We also differ on strategy. You are intent on pursuing the disaffected who may or may not want to be Jewish, and while you’re at it, you counsel the abandonment of Orthodox Jews and others who care about Jewish peoplehood. It’s a remarkable approach to building a market, Joey: Sever your ties to your most faithful customers in favor of those who show the least commitment to anything Jewish. I favor the reverse: build from the core outward—and the core is committed to Jewish peoplehood.

As you consider what is novel about our times, I wonder whether you recognize that for the first time since Emancipation, Orthodoxy is ascendant, rather than on the defensive. While the heirs of the socialists and other universalists are disappearing as Jews and while liberal versions of Judaism are finding it ever harder to retain the allegiance of their youth, Orthodox Jews are building strong communities, reproducing at high rates, and are so self-assured that they are engaged in outreach efforts to win back Jewish souls. I’ve met a fair number of Jews who have been touched by these efforts. Their existence ought to teach us something about the hunger many Jews feel for real Jewish meaning.

You and I also differ on how Jews can best survive and thrive as a small minority in America. You seem to favor ever more accommodation to current mores and values. I contend that Judaism can only thrive if it is countercultural, and the culture it must reject is precisely what you find most appealing. Of course, as Jacob Neusner observes, Judaism must make sense of the world in which we live. But that explanation must be rooted in Judaic thinking and categories. Its explanations must transcend the ephemeral to address deeper human needs. Any Judaism offering such meaning must be rooted in authentic Jewish teachings.

And what you propose, Joey, is inauthentic: How can you claim that a Jew is “anyone who makes an effort to enrich his life with the wisdom of the Jewish tradition and Jewish scripture”—a definition, by the way, that would include millions of Bible reading Christians—even as you reject the assumptions about Jewishness embedded in every book of the Torah and subsequent Jewish texts? Already in the Book of Exodus, the people of Israel are commanded to serve as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Countless Jewish texts explicitly stress the special obligations Jews have toward one another. Jewish literature is replete with distinctions between Jews and gentiles. Your jettisoning of Jewish peoplehood is a repudiation of the very wisdom that suffuses the texts you claim are at the core of your Jewishness.

I’m not going to engage in the charade you apparently encountered while growing up, Joey. I’m not going to argue that the sum total of Jewishness is to repair the world. Rather, I believe engagement with Jewish texts and Jewish living will deepen you as a person, ground you in the life of a vibrant people undergoing one of the most exciting revivals in human history, and compel you to struggle with concepts both foreign to this age and timelessly profound. I hope your “impulse to Jewishness” will triumph sufficiently to give authentic Judaism a serious chance to heal your fractured, Frankenjewish identity. The Jewish people need you.

I’ll be happy to continue our conversation—online or off.

Jack

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From: Jack Wertheimer
To: Joey Kurtzman
Subject: No Torah, No People...What's the Future of Jewish Life?

Dear Joey,

You call yourself a reporter and in fact your last letter is a fascinating report from the field about the perceptions of a certain segment of your generation. At this point it is hard to know hFive More and We've Got a Minyan: a "polyglot, postmodern, American creole" minyan, anywayow many of your peers share your outlook and experiences, but I believe you when you argue that you have come of age in a very different world than earlier generations of Jews.

This is my understanding of what you report: 1) You live in a world of “cosmopolitan pluralism” where you interact with people of many backgrounds (e.g. your experience with Korean-American friends at a Baptist Bible school), and, more broadly, you are immersed in a “polyglot, postmodern American creole culture.” 2) You take it for granted that society is so open that there is no barrier between Jews and non-Jews and certainly no way to prevent intermarriage, even if you wanted to—which you do not.

I believe there is yet an additional factor shaping your generation, which has great bearing on our discussion of peoplehood: You live at a time when well-educated Americans marry late, if at all, and have few children, if any. The fact that the responsibilities of parenting are far down the road for most of your generation further disconnects you from what used to be conventional Jewish life.

By contrast, your Orthodox peers for the most part live in a different world. Since they tend to marry when they are 10-to-15 years younger than most non-Orthodox Jews and have children at younger ages, they assume a set of responsibilities that bring them into contact with organized Jewish life and have a greater and more immediate stake in the collective Jewish present and future.

I can understand why you would regard all these circumstances as a wonderful gift. You feel free and unbounded—no family, no children, no people, no limits, just the great wide world. Little wonder that you latch on to the great causes of our time: “Darfur and mass child death-by-malnutrition” give your life meaning. But do they? I don’t question your concern with these horrors. Which thinking person would not be shaken? But forgive my skepticism, Joey: If you cared deeply about these causes, you would pick yourself up and join the Peace Corps or volunteer for any of the myriad of service organizations sending Americans to do good in the world. Instead, you are content to invoke the mantra of Darfur and malnutrition, as if the brutalities of war and poverty are some new invention.

There is something profoundly adolescent about all this emoting, which is about right because your generation is living out a delayed adolescence, but you are convinced that it is all a terrific gift. Rabbinic Judaism, by contrast, understood long ago that unbounded freedom is a trap. No family, no children, no people, no limits amount to … very little. I doubt your immigrant forbearers would shep nachas.

There is a quality to your writing about Jewish ethnocentrism that is highly reminiscent of the not-too-distant past. Ninety years ago, Rosa Luxemburg declared she had “no room in my heart for Jewish suffering.” Because of the “screams … of the unheard,” she wrote, “I have no separate corner in my heart for the ghetto. I feel at home in the entire world wherever there are clouds and birds and human tears.” Three years after writing these words, she was murdered for her revolutionary activities by German nationalists.A Sanguine Disposition: Cosmopolitanism has been a mixed bag for idealistic young Jews like Rosa Luxemburg

After World War II in countries throughout Eastern Europe, other Jews also proclaimed their eternal fidelity to international socialism, only to be lined up in front of firing squads for being “rootless cosmopolitans.” Don’t be so quick to assume that the easy pluralism and globalism you take for granted is forever, any more than is the post-nationalist era proclaimed by the Tony Judt’s of the Jewish world. And don’t assume your non-Jewish peers are as indifferent to group allegiances as they might claim. Your Jewish spiritual ancestors with their flights of internationalist fancy learned this lesson too late.

You and I can’t seem to discuss the peoplehood issue without reference to intermarriage. Let me try to clarify where we differ: I never suggested that intermarriage is the cause of all that bedevils American Jewry. Of course, intermarriage is a symptom of profound social transformation and the collapse of social barriers.

The reason I labeled intermarriage a disaster in my opening letter is that it promotes further erosion in Jewish life. How? First, because intermarriage fuels more intermarriage: it depletes the market of eligible Jewish males (who intermarry at higher rates than Jewish females) and thus forces many Jewish women who seek to create a Jewish family but do not want to intermarry to choose between a life without children or single parenthood or marrying a non-Jew. Second, when only 30 percent of intermarried parents claim to be raising their children as Jews, we are losing a large majority of the next generation. And, third, many among those who are raised with some Jewish content, are exposed to such confused messages that they struggle to reconcile their incompatible heritages. All the happy talk so fashionable in today’s Jewish community about intermarriage merely obscures these underlying realities.

I reject your contention that we are obsessed with “bloodlines and marital practices.” The religious and communal leadership of the Jewish community has capitulated on this issue, avoiding serious discussion about what is really going on, and prattles endlessly about “outreach” as if there is a vast horde of intermarried families clamoring for engagement with Jewish life, but is somehow shut out by the “bloodline” police. Nonsense. Everyone from Chabad to Reform to birthright Israel is engaged in outreach. Their efforts cannot mitigate the reality that large majorities of intermarried families and their children are lost to the Jewish people.

Why is this reality not spurring you and your friends at Jewcy to action? Why do you spend your time defending the status quo, rather than fighting for the revitalization of Jewish life? In 1969, a group of young Jewish activists forced their way into the General Assembly of the then Council of Jewish Federations to demand greater investment in Jewish education. This was during the era of the Civil Rights movement and the anti-war demonstrations. The Jewish students protesters were supporters of those causes too, but they invested their energy in challenging the Jewish establishment for being insufficiently Jewish in its priorities.

Today, by contrast, you and other young Jews are busy worrying about the ethnocentrism of the Jewish community. I am not a big fan of baby-boomer self-absorption, but in this case, a portion of my generation had it right. And you have it wrong: the problem of American Jewish life is an insufficiency of Jewish pride and connection, not a surfeit of ethnocentrism.

I wish your version of generational rebellion would focus on the unbearable lightness of Jewish life in American. I wish you would stop with the self-congratulatory routine about “the self-confidence of this generation of Jewish Americans” to look at the hollowness of Jewish life. Yes, you are confident that no barriers will impede you as you strive for socio-economic success. But the collapse of those barriers is hardly your achievement. Are your peers self-confident in their Judaic literacy and the ease with which they can negotiate their way around a synagogue religious service, a Jewish text, a neighborhood in Jerusalem?

Most of your generation attended mediocre if not worse Jewish educational programs; most are illiterate in the national language of the Jewish people; most have only a glancing familiarity with the riches of our Jewish heritage. Instead of being angry about the terrible waste and demanding of the establishment that itThey Call This a "Siddur": How many FrankenJews have any clue what to do with it? gets its priorities straight, you resort to motherhood and apple pie talk about Darfur and malnutrition, as if that requires a great sell.

Your concluding observations about the death of ethnocentrism, reminds me of a conversation I held last summer with a group of American Jewish college students. One of them declared: “I believe it is immoral for Jews to give priority to aiding fellow Jews when so many other people are in greater distress.” In reply, a different student shot back, “Don’t we have a greater responsibility to take care of our own family? Jews around the world are our family.”

As I read your impatient remarks about those who believe “ someone is a less appropriate object of our love and commitment because of the particulars of their genealogy,” I can only conclude that either you don’t accept that human beings have a special responsibility to give back to their own family or that you don’t regard the Jewish people as your family. Given the world in which I grew up, these are unthinkable options for me.

But if you truly accept no special responsibility for fellow Jews, if you cannot bring yourself to rank concern for fellow Jews uppermost in your priorities, then I am left to wonder what being Jewish means to you. Taking care of your own people does not cut it for you; assuming the yoke of Torah, which among other things issues a religious commandment to build a Jewish family in the time-honored fashion of marrying a Jew, does not seem to resonate. So, Joey, what do you believe ought to be the content of a Jewish life?

Jack

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