The Issue is Conversion
THE ISSUE IS CONVERSION The Dismal Demographer stands before us, using a scythe as his pointer, and announces his grim tidings: There are too few of us, and we are becoming fewer. Soon, we shall...
...Those that moment's editors proposed were not convincing, and here, too, there seems to us substantial need for a re-examination of the tradition...
...It was, for all of us, a fascinating evening...
...On December 2, Rabbi Alexander Schindler, President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, addressed the quarterly meeting of the Union's Board, convened in Houston...
...But it is also true—or appears to be—that intermarriage, despite the very great frequency with which it occurs (31.7 percent is the best estimate we have) does not occasion a loss in Jewish numbers...
...Our implicit assumption, evidently, is that faith is something that may be acquired, while peoplehood is not...
...Again, there may be compelling explanations...
...And in the early winter of 1979, it did with an uncommon bang...
...In the months ahead, we intend to come back to this issue again and again...
...And while visions of our imminent disappearance through demographic suicide are almost surely overstated, there is ample cause for concern—and for intelligent action...
...And perhaps that it as it should be...
...Mostly, they stay away...
...To entice with the truth of a community so rich in its expression that only the foolish would reject it...
...And tomorrow, who knows...
...It is true that we are reproducing at a rate below the replacement level...
...Such efforts, it has been generally supposed, would fracture the fragile pluralism on which the American Jewish community so profoundly depends...
...Why the barriers...
...For after saying some very plausible things about our response to the intermarried, Schindler went on to propose a major Jewish effort to convert what he called the "unchurched...
...In fact, because of conversion to Judaism, and because of the many families that choose to raise their children as Jews even in the absence of conversion, intermarriage may result in a modest net gain in Jewish numbers...
...We are not, and it does...
...Jews resent the efforts that others invest in converting them, and, with isolated exceptions, have refused to engage in proselytizing efforts of their own...
...As if, when taken, we have gained anything substantial...
...You owe it," we say, "to your parents, or to your children...
...moment asked several thoughtful people to react to the proposal, and we here present four such reactions...
...Numbers do matter, of course...
...Your private behavior has intolerable public consequences...
...The act of conversion to Judaism involves an acceptance of the Jewish faith, and implies an acceptance of the Jewish destiny...
...Accordingly, moment's editors spent an evening in late January talking with a group of converts to Judaism about their experiences, and the transcript of that conversation appears in this issue...
...But from the outside, looking in, it must seem somewhat curious that we demand of the stranger a commitment so many born Jews do not accept...
...Soon, we shall have intermarried, assimilated, zpg'd ourselves out of existence...
...From their standpoint, that tradition is simply incomprehensible...
...it is our lack of will to live that is doing us in...
...It is no surprise, therefore, that the Schindler proposal—now Union policy— attracted so much attention...
...Yet there is no other door...
...Do people really make the most important private decisions in response to an abstract sense of duty...
...Perhaps...
...Apparently, those problems are sufficiently distinctive to warrant some continuing attention beyond the formal act of conversion...
...Were we adept at that task, the issue of numbers might not arise...
...The brother of six becomes the father of one...
...No, the task is less to convince than to entice...
...The threat to the Jews is not from the outside...
...The most obvious pool of potential Jews whose commitment to Judaism and to the Jewish community would significantly augment the number of Jews in the United States is, of course, that large number of Jews who currently have no connections and no commitments to our community...
...His speech, which appears on the following pages, was front page news in the next day's New York Times, and one part of it occasioned a debate that is likely to go on for many, many months to come...
...But to the "uncommunitied," who are in search of a people, it is an impossible barrier...
...That assumption may be accurate, but it is not self-evident...
...We thought that it might also be interesting, perhaps even useful, to chat with some people who have themselves been through the conversion experience...
...The first is a tension which inheres in the distinctive character of the Jews as a religious civilization—that is, as a people that is not simply about a faith, a formal religious doctrine...
...Conversion is a subject of considerable delicacy...
...This will present no obstacle to the unchurched who are in search of a faith...
...Our attention was especially drawn to two aspects of the conversion problem...
...Perhaps we would end up in the same place, with the same policy, but at least we might understand that policy, and be able to interpret and explain it to others more completely...
...And for us, although we could scarcely skim the surface, the evening was filled with insight and information...
...We do very little fishing in that pool, and when we do, we bait our hooks with guilt...
...The door through which the convert to Judaism is required to enter is thus one which many born Jews never open...
...And finally, of course, we ought not let the controversy over conversion cause us to neglect the less controversial elements of the Schindler proposal, those which deal with our attitudes toward the intermarried...
...We can insist as energetically as we like that the real issue of Jewish life is the issue of quality, but the fact remains that a vital community, a community with ambitions that go beyond life as a quaint and somewhat exotic sect, requires substantial numbers in order to sustain the institutions, the literature, the network of activities to which it is committed...
...It is virtually impossible to estimate the number of separated Jews with any accuracy, but if we take all those who are totally removed and add as well those whose Jewishness is entirely a matter for occasional private recognition, never for public translation, we are almost surely talking about some two of every five American Jews...
...Here, too, there are delicate issues, as we seek to distinguish between our traditional objection to intermarriage while we develop a more welcoming stance toward the intermarried...
...The second aspect of the matter which especially drew our attention is the response of the new Jews to our community's tradition of discouraging the prospective convert...
...As if such bait will be taken...
...Those who find the Jewish community attractive, who are drawn to Jewish sensibility and to Jewish values, but who are without religious conviction, are bound to stay away, or to engage in a hypocritic act...
...For our guests, it was a rare opportunity to share with others who have also faced problems of acceptance and adjustment...
...But it is obvious that very many Jews—that is, born Jews—are either ignorant of or ambivalent toward Judaism-as-religion...
...If, they argue, a person sincerely seeks to associate himself with the Jews, why should we not accept that person easily...
...Perhaps we ought to examine it...
...Moreover, demography is a notoriously fragile science, not because its practitioners lack skill, but because the objects of their study lack constancy...
...But the difficulty of the task should not be allowed to obscure its importance at a time when so large a number of Jews choose as their mates people who arrive at Judaism from other places...
Vol. 4 • March 1979 • No. 4
