I had lunch one day this week with Yishai, a fellow from California. He gently chided me for being, on balance, pessimistic about America's non-orthodox Jews. His most interesting comment was that while seen from Israel it may appear they're drifting away, it's also the case that the level of ethnic awareness and commitment among America's Jews is higher than among any other group which has been in America that long (mainstream American Jewry hails mostly from the start of the 20th century, which means they're now into their second century).
The NYT has a story which takes this much further: apparently there's this publicly funded charter school in Brooklyn (Flatbush, no less) which looks like a Jewish school and teaches classes in Hebrew, but is open to anyone and has attracted lots of unlikely kids. America never ceases to surprise.
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Now that points it out, he makes a valid point. My very WIC suburb of Boston (White Irish/Italian Catholic) is neither very Irish nor very Italian, despite the fact that 97% of the population is white and that population is split 50/50 Irish/Italian. In fact, the only "ethnic identity" I have ever noticed is the number of Irish flags hung for St. Patrick's Day. But there are no Italian-speaking or Irish-speaking clubs or any kind of ethnic festival. It's just a bunch of White Americans.
Compare this to, say, Brookline, where even though the Jewish majority has dwindled to a minority, it's still the most obviously "ethnic" group in the area.
That Yishai fellow is quite bright, worth paying attention to.
American Jews are maintaining their ethnic identity ONLY through their adherence to NewJudaism, the updated version of Judaism that I have founded. Our tenets are social and economic equality, and restoration of land and resources to the authentic endogenous residents of the land. This is most famously enshrined in UN194, which guarantees the right of return for the Palestinian people. You can see the evidence of the success of New Judaism in many current events, such as Beinarts repudiation of the zionist-industrial complex, the near derailing of Orens commencement speech at Brandeis (only last minute pressure from rich neocons saved Oren at Brandeis), the playing of My Name is Rachel Corrie at the majority of Jewish film festivals among many other examples
Oh, Tony (if that is your real name), the Palestinians may be "endogenous," but the Jews are the indigenous residents of Israel.
Do you also support restoring America to the Native Americans, Mr. Judt? And Kaliningrad to the Lithuanians and Prussians?
Yeah, never heard you mention those. You were too busy mentioning how you, personally saved American Jewry.
Or maybe I was too busy vomiting from revulsion to hear you stand up for *actually* oppressed peoples?
Pardon my error. That would be "Mr. Jutner." I was never good with J-names.
I've heard lots of people remark on this (Ross Douthat mentioned it apropos of Beinart's piece), and it certainly seems to be true from anecdotal evidence. I'm sure there's also rigorous work of this -- does anyone have any good places to start?
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