Focusing on the Personal
HELMREICH, WILLIAM B.
Focusing on the Personal The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America By Steven M. Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen Indiana. 255 pp. $27.95. Reviewed by William B. Helmreich Professor...
...Rallies to save Iranian Jews, for instance, require organized activity...
...The authors further confirm the receding influence of Israel, the Holocaust and Jewish organizations in Jewish life...
...The Jew within" inhabits "an intimate sphere" where identity is determined by one's inner needs...
...The big loser is clearly the organized Jewish community—the Federations, groups like Hadassah, the Zionist Organization of America, and defense organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress...
...Reviewed by William B. Helmreich Professor of Sociology and Judaic Studies, City University of New York Graduate Center LIKE Charles Silberman's A Certain People published in 1985, and Samuel Freedman's Jew vs...
...Not surprisingly, therefore, contemporary Jews evince little angst about intermarriage...
...For the fact is that Judaism and its adherents have always been synonymous with group activity, group loyalty, group expression, and a shared set of concerns...
...Their central thesis is that although Jewishness used to be expressed primarily through organizational involvement, during the last decade or so ethnic identification has become much more personal...
...They focus on the 60 per cent of American Jews who are moderately identified with their faith, leaving out the 20 per cent who are deeply affiliated and the 20 per cent who are mostly unaffiliated...
...Similarly, in a fully integrated society more positive reasons for being Jewish are necessary than reacting to anti-Semitism—hence the turning inward and becoming reflective...
...This in no way detracts from Cohen and Eisen's study...
...If being Jewish is nothing more than doing good works, what sets a Jew apart from a Quaker, from a good Christian...
...As opposed to Freedman's assessment of a denominationally divided Jewish community, Cohen and Eisen assert that those fault lines have become far less significant, even annoying...
...Amid the rapid technological changes taking place around them, they appear to yearn for something stable and relatively permanent whose spiritual essence rises above the materialistic culture...
...On the other hand, the consequent revival of the old saw, "Jews are like all other Americans, only more so," seems a bit premature...
...You don't need it anymore...
...Indeed, the challenge for Jewish organizations and their leaders is to find ways to satisfy these desires through their institutions...
...Lieberman was farmore than a Jewish candidate...
...And what he stood for—from his opposing Hollywood's emphasis on sex, violence and drugs to his supporting gay rights and abortion—appealed to a wide range of Americans...
...Steven M. Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen, both respected scholars, have produced an important, thoughtful study that is destined to generate debate—particularly among Jewish leaders and organizations, for whom their findings have profound implications...
...While social scientists may quibble with the actual number of Jews who fit this model, everyone familiar with the evolution of the community will agree that overall the model is accurate...
...Jew issued earlier this year, The Jew Within seeks to paint a defining picture...
...In a sense, the Vice Presidential candidacy of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman is instructive here...
...Even the most enthusiastic proponents of the new identity, I suspect, will come to recognize the importance of maintaining Jewish organizational strength— however much it needs to be restructured...
...When Jews have achieved full acceptance Federations become, at most, merely one more source of contacts...
...The social service agencies continue to function well, particularly for immigrants and the aged, but many Jews do not use the system...
...My own view is that the postmodems are digging a hole in which they will ultimately bury themselves and the community...
...Federations, with their business groups, provide a network where people can connect...
...In addition, the insights that pervade the quoted interviews themselves provide a road map for those seeking to both understand and reinvigorate Jewish life...
...What does it portend for Jewish survival...
...It is an "exceedingly difficult" question, they say, refusing "to venture a confident assessmentof Jewry's future...
...support of Israel cannot be a matter of what one person thinks ought to be done...
...On the contrary, its analysis of what thoughtful Jews are looking for remains cogent and even compelling...
...If everyone has their own interpretation of what it means to be Jewish, how will the community maintain a sense of its distinctiveness...
...Given this shift to the personal, Jewish identity is currently manifested mainly through family, holiday observances, synagogue affiliation, and Jewish education...
...Lacking the same sort of involvement, they also have to be asked what they will ultimately transmit to their own children...
...While practically all of their respondents were married to Jews, many had dated nonJews and included Gentiles among their close friends...
...Unfortunately, Jews cannot survive as an entity without organizations to serve their social, cultural and religious needs...
...Not necessarily because they agreed with all his positions, but because they liked the fact that he was his own man and that he unselfconsciously displayed his deeply held religious faith...
...Moreover, belief in God altogether is less critical for their identity than it is for Catholics or Protestants...
...The optimistic promise of The Jew Within has to be examined against that backdrop...
...The authors base their conclusions on 50 in-depth interviews, backed up by an analysis of survey data...
...They appear uncertain whether this new, inchoate form of identifying can survive beyond the generation of its proponents...
...That question is raised by the authors throughout the book, but their hesitant and equivocal observations indicate considerable discomfort with its implications...
...Jews today, the authors tell us, are in apostmodern phase...
...Their respondents are aware "at rare moments" that they have not yet broken as free from institutional moorings as they claim, but leave no doubt about their goal...
...According to the authors, the majority of today's Jews want largely to be seen by their friends as "good and caring human beings," not as "good Jews...
...As one leader of a Jewish defense organization recently observed: "Three months ago we were being told: 'Close your Israel office...
...So it would seem the postmoderns have to be made aware that what makes them feel Jewish was passed on by parents who belonged to the organized Jewish community...
...Still, it cannot be denied that something is missing in the lives of many Jews who occupy the broad center Cohen and Eisen examine...
...At the same time, it has to be recognized that Jews are dissociating from Jewish organizations because their needs are not being fulfilled by them...
...He was credited with energizing Democratic standardbearer Al Gore's stagnating campaign...
...Peace is around the corner.' And now, we have anti-Semitic incidents and attacks daily—in England, France, the U. S., and in dozens of other countries...
...They believe in God, but it is a personal deity, as opposed to the idea of a Jewish God who shaped the Torah and has a special relationship with the Jewish people...
...They are concerned about it in terms of personal happiness, not group survival, Cohen and Eisen note...
...Jews no longer think about them much, espousing instead the view that one can be a Jew in any of a hundred ways...
Vol. 83 • November 2000 • No. 5
