One sign of the chasm separating the American Orthodox community and much of the larger Jewish world is how they use the term “outreach.”
To us Orthodox, the word encompasses efforts born of our deep concern for, and responsibility to, our fellow Jews.
To many non-Orthodox leaders, though, it has come to mean the courting of non-Jews, especially those living with Jews, in an effort to include them, one way or another, in the Jewish community.
Some proponents of such efforts aim to bring the reached to conversion. Others do not even seek any such end and are content to accept non-Jews “as they are” into their Jewish communal lives.
Reform Rabbi Janet Marder, for instance, on every Yom Kippur asks non-Jewish spouses of her congregants to come to the bimah, the platform from which the Torah is read, where she blesses them with the “priestly blessings” that the Torah says should be bestowed on the Jewish people.
Her example was lauded at a recent national Reform gathering, where the president of the Union for Reform Judaism made his own plea for “welcoming non-Jewish spouses and converts to Judaism.”
Soon thereafter, The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism’s executive vice president asserted that “if we don’t do an effective campaign to inspire the children” of mixed-marriages, “we’ll lose an entire generation” — leaving unclear whether he meant all such children or just those Jewish law defines as Jewish.
The renewed push to blur further the increasingly smudged line between Jews and non-Jews may be fueled by the mind-numbing numbers of intermarried American Jews and the dwindled numbers of American Jews as a whole projected by studies.
Ill-conceived and futile
There is some fear at work here, too, of an Orthodox demographic onslaught. As Prof. Jack Wertheimer of the Jewish Theological Seminary noted in the October 2005 issue of Commentary magazine:
“If the Orthodox continue to retain the loyalties of their young people … they will become an ever larger, more visible, and better represented part of the total community…”
The headlong rush toward inclusiveness, however, as Wertheimer bravely notes, is a strategy ill-conceived and futile:
“Faced with irrefutable evidence of demographic decline, communal leaders have worked to ‘reframe’ the discussion. The reframing goes like this: the Jewish population should be seen not as hemorrhaging, but rather as evolving new forms of expression…”
“The challenge of demographic decline, then,” he wrote, “is to be met by inclusiveness, pluralism, and a welcoming atmosphere.” And he observes: “The worse the decline has grown, the more fervently has this mantra been invoked — and not just invoked but acted upon.”
Then, throwing all religious-political correctness to the wind, Wertheimer declared that “the working assumption of Jewish officialdom” that “the acceptance and encouragement of every kind of ‘family arrangement’ will insure that Jewish life will thrive” is “not only a gross distortion of Judaism, it is palpably false.”
There are other principled voices in the non-Orthodox world. The “Jewish In-Marriage Initiative” has a board of directors that includes Wertheimer, long-time Jewish communal leader Shoshana Cardin, Reform Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin and Conservative Rabbi Alan Silverstein.
It “is dedicated,” says Cardin, its chair, “to educating and encouraging [Jewish] parents to counsel their children to look for Jewish mates.” The Jewish community, she asserts, “must make endogamy the first choice.”
But those voices are all but drowned out by the “inclusionist” chorus, which includes not only Reform and Conservative leaders but also independent efforts like the “Jewish Outreach Institute.”
JOI’s mission statement says it seeks to create “a more inclusive Jewish community for intermarried families and unengaged Jews,” and its executive director says, “conversion… should not be an outreach strategy.”
Similarly, Hillel, the Jewish campus initiative, recently unveiled a survey showing that Jewish college students are more likely than ever to be “part of an interfaith family… have a non-Jewish boyfriend or girlfriend” and “identify as ethnically Jewish rather than religiously Jewish.”
To us Orthodox, this is all tragic. And it stirs us to recommit ourselves to outreach — the original kind.
Cynics, Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike, mock the hope that American Jews estranged from their religious heritage can ever be brought back in appreciable numbers to traditional Jewish observance.
But among the many thousands of once non-observant Jews who are today living Torah-observant lives are not only those who hailed from informed backgrounds and followed the trajectory set by their convictions, but many, too, who came from very far afield.
One is David Lieberman, a Ph.D. and best-selling author of books on human psychology, currently of Lakewood, N.J. Another is Rabbi Yom Tov Glaser, today of Jerusalem, but once (as Johnny Glaser) a hard-partying surfer-dude of southern California.
Those two men are among a number of “returnees” featured in a recent Aish HaTorah video, “Inspired,” produced by New York psychotherapist Rabbi Yaakov Salomon.
Reaching out to non-Jews, in the hope that they may hold the key to the Jewish future is one approach. Realizing, and focusing on, the millions of David Liebermans and Johnny Glasers is another.
Radically changed Jewish lives like theirs are testimony to the power of Judaism and the resilience of the Jewish soul. No one should underestimate either.
Rabbi Avi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America. This article was provided by Am Echad Resources.
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