Abstract
Intermarriage is but one of the many indicators of Jewish assimilation and secularization. While there are those who contend that intermarriage does not constitute a danger to Jewish demographic continuity, the weight of evidence points in the opposite direction. Various tactical solutions have been proposed to cope with the problem and many of these are likely to have a positive impact. However, in the long run the most powerful response is one of reconnecting Jews with Torah, their traditional religious culture. Thus, the solution to the demographic question resides in the revival of the holy community predicated on a sense of transcendent obligation.
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Notes
For comparable contemporary data for other Western Jewries, see Doris Bensimon and Sergio DellaPergola,La Population Juive de France: Sociodemographie et Identite, (Jerusalem and Paris, 1984): Paul Ritterband, “The Fertility of the Jewish People: A Contemporary Overview,” in S. DellaPergola and L. Cohen, editors,World Jewish Population: Trends and Policies, Jerusalem, 1992:93–105.
Cohen, Steven M. and Gabriel Berger, “Understanding and Misunderstanding the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey.” Paper presented at the Consultation of the 1990 CJF — North American Jewish Data Bank (Center for Jewish Studies, CUNY) National Jewish Population Survey, Brandeis University, October, 1991.
These are now being studied by Professor Egon Mayer. This set of papers is the third major collection on intermarriage to have been produced at the Center for Jewish Studies of the Graduate School CUNY.
Saadia Gaon,The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, translated and edited by Samuel Rosenblatt, Yale Judaica Series, New Haven, 1948, Third Treatise, Chapter 7:158, paragraph 2. I have taken minor literary liberties with the Rosenblatt translation which reads, “...our nation of the Children of Israel is a nation only by virtue of its laws.” In the authoritative Arabic to Hebrew translation of Yehudah Ibn Tibbon, the Arabic for “its laws” is rendered as “Toroteha.”
The terms “secular” and its derivatives have been used in varying ways by different authors. Some refer to institutional arrangements others toWeltanschauung. In either case, secularity means “of this world.” That is, what is real is what is palpable and transcendence is an illusion. For a brief review of the use of the terms in the context of Jewish history and thought, see Jacob Katz, “Religion as a Uniting and Dividing Force in Modern Jewish History” and Laurence J. Silberstein, “Response”; both in Jacob Katz, editor,The Role of Religion in Modern Jewish History, Cambridge, 1975:1–11, 23–28. On the level of personal perspective, I find Silberman’s formulation apposite: “they [modern, secular man] no longer perceive reality, whether personal, cultural or social, in terms of sacred, mysterious, and awesome powers that transcend man.” (p. 26)
See Gerhard Lenski,The Religious Factor, revised edition, Garden City, 1963:44–47. Steven M. Cohen and Paul Ritterband, “Why American Jews Want Small Families: An Interreligious Comparison of College Graduateset” in P. Ritterband, ed.,Modern Jewish Fertility, Leiden, 1981:209–231. Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman,Research Report, The National Survey of Religious Identification, 1989–90 New York, 1991 (typescript).
For the historical record, see Marsha Roszenblit,The Jews of Vienna, 1867–1914, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1983:128–146,et passim; Felix A. Theilhaber,Der Untergang der deutschen Juden: Eine Volkswirtschaftliche Studie, Munchen, 1921 [1980],passim; Steven Lowenstein, “Voluntary and Involuntary Limitation of Fertility in Nineteenth Century Bavarian Jewry,” in Paul Ritterband, ed.Modern Jewish Fertility, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1981:94–111; Alice Goldstein, “Some Demographic Characteristics of Village Jews in Germany: Nonneweier, 1880–1931,” in Ritterband,op.cit, pp. 112–143. For contemporary views, see Doris Ben Simon and Sergio DellaPergola,La Population Juive de France: Sociodemographie et Identite, (Jerusalem and Paris, 1984),passim; Schmelz, U.O.Modern Jerusalem’s Demographic Evolution, Jerusalem, Institute of Contemporary Jewry, 1987,passim; Steven M. Cohen and Paul Ritterband, “Why Contemporary American Jews Want Small Families: An Interreligious Comparison,” in P. Ritterband,op.cit., pp. 209–231. For theoretical discussions on the relationship between piety and demography among Jews, see, Paul Ritterband, “Introduction”, in Ritterband,op.cit., pp. 1–17; for a parallel discussion among Christians, see Ron Lesterhege and Chris Wilson, “Modes of Production, Secularization and the Pace of Fertility Decline in Western Europe, 1870–1930,” in Ansley J. Coale and Susan Cotts Watkins, eds.,The Decline of Fertility in Europe, (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986) pp. 261–292.
Eliezer Schweid,A History of Jewish Thought in the 20th Century (in Hebrew), Tel Aviv, 1990:214–222.
Pirkey Avot, 1:1.
See Paul Ritterband and Harold S. Wechsler,Jewish Learning in American Universities, forthcoming.
The same notion has been expressed to account for the significance of secular Jewish high culture for contemporary Jews. Thus, “history becomes what it had never been before-the faith of fallen Jews. For the first time history, not a sacred text, becomes the arbiter of Judaism.” Yosef Haim Yerushalmi,Zakhor, Seattle, 1982:86.
Yehezkel Kaufmann,Golah v’Neykhar (Exile and Alienage, Hebrew) Tel Aviv, 1930, Volume II, Book 1: 22–44.
Herbert Gans, “Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America,”Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2, 1988:1–20.
See H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, FromMax Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York, 1946:25.
Simon N. Herman,Jewish Identity: A Social Psychological Perspective, Beverly Hills, 1977:242 et passim.
Wissenschaft des Judentums and its heirs in America and Israel will not suffice precisely because it has produced a professional literature accessible only to other scholars and has not become the compelling high culture of the Jews. See Gershom Scholem, “Reflections on Wissenschaft des Judentums,” inExplications and Implications: Writings on Jewish Heritage and Renaissance [D’varim B’Go] (in Hebrew) Tel Aviv, 1982, Volume 2:385–403. For an opposing view, see Ismar Schorsch, “Wissenschaft and Values,”Tikkun, vol. 2, no. 3, 1987:33–36.
See Erwin Goodenough,Toward a Mature Faith, Prentice-Hall, New York, 1955:95–96.
See Keysar,et al in this volume.
The daunting character of the task is well described in Nathan Glazer,American Judaism, Second edition, revised, Chicago, 1972: see particularly chapter VIII.
See Leonard Fein,Reform is a Verb, New York, 1972; Frida Kerner Furman,Beyond Yiddishkeit: The Struggle for Jewish Identity in a Reform Synagogue, New York, 1987.
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Ritterband, P. “...Only by virtue of its torah”. Cont Jewry 12, 99–108 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02965536
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02965536