Sometimes a prophecy of disaster can help avert its fulfillment. In the Bible, for example, the prophet Jonah told the people of Nineveh that God would destroy the city unless they repented of their sins — which inspired their repentance and survival, to Jonah’s initial irritation.
Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, president of the Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation, seems to have had a similar experience, and to have a different reaction to it.
In 1984, he published a controversial article titled “Will There Be One Jewish People in the Year 2000?” He warned that trends in both liberal Judaism and Orthodoxy might cause the irreversible splitting of the Jews into groups that would not recognize each other’s legitimacy, and whose members would refuse to marry each other.
More than 20 years later, the split hasn’t happened, at least not to the degree he feared; and Greenberg, an Orthodox rabbi, seems delighted.
“People became alarmed and did change their behavior,” lowering the rhetorical temperature, he told The Chronicle on Tuesday during an interview at the offices of the Helen Bader Foundation.
Not that there are not “festering problems,” like Orthodox refusals to recognize Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist conversions, or the Orthodox and Conservative refusals to accept Reform and Reconstructionist patrilineal descent for establishment of Jewish identity, he said.
Still, “there has been some damage, but the worst didn’t happen,” he said. A big reason why, he said, has been the behavior of the Jewish philanthropic community.
Jewish federations and individual contributors “funded projects that crossed denominational lines” and withheld funds from people who were “pushing division,” he said. “That reduced some friction.”
‘The right moves’
Greenberg was in Milwaukee for two purposes. First, he spoke at a board meeting of the Helen Bader Foundation, which focused on the foundation’s Jewish Life and Learning program area.
During an interview before that meeting, Greenberg said that he planned to discuss the “general trends” in Jewish philanthropy and the major issues of Jewish continuity, which he called “the challenge of choice.”
Since the 1960s, U.S. Jews have found “full acceptance” in U.S. society; and in that society “everything, including identity, is choose-able, variable, part-time,” he said.
Greenberg said that Jewish education, both formal (day schools) and informal (camps, Israel travel), “is the key” to preserving Jewish identity in such a society; and he praised the Milwaukee community and the Bader Foundation for their “good judgment” in investing in both types of Jewish education.
He acknowledged that there are no guarantees that participation will preserve Jewish identity or prevent intermarriage for all Jews. Even if a family “could do everything right,” the society around is “so open,” he said.
But “you can shift the odds,” he said. He cited a study by sociologist Steven M. Cohen of the Hebrew Union College/Jewish Institute of Religion that attempts to award points for such activities as attending a day school or Jewish camp. According to that system, accumulating points increases the likelihood of preventing intermarriage.
While Greenberg cautioned against taking this ‘too literally,” the study shows how education can reduce the probability of assimilation and intermarriage, he said.
Greenberg also said that while he was in Milwaukee, he would visit with Archbishop Timothy Dolan, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Milwaukee.
He met Dolan last September when they both participated in a Jewish-Catholic study trip to Poland and Rome, which was sponsored by the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding of Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn.
Greenberg said that Dolan is a “rising figure in Jewish-Christian relations.” Moreover, Greenberg’s most recently published book is “For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter Between Judaism and Christianity,” in which he makes a “case for a new Jewish understanding of Christianity.”
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