The Altered Landscape

For about 10 years now I have been telling everyone I’ve met, with very little prompting, that America was becoming a partly Jewish nation. By that I meant that we were largely accepted within government, education, law, medicine and most of the elite institutions in the U.S.; that our children had access to the best schools; and that the job market was open to us. And, more to the point, that by occupying such a primary role in the making and dispersal of culture, high and low (novels and art, films and TV), we were imprinting the rest of this nation with a Jewish sensibility. So what’s the great surprise that today Ruth Bader Ginsburg sits on the Supreme Court without any fanfare or that Madonna is “drawn towards” kabbalah or that everyone consumes bagels.

But now as we trumpet the story on our cover — Jewish being “the new, new thing” — I am less certain. Or, more accurately, I believe that while Jews have in the main become part and parcel of white America, the ascendancy of Jewish culture in America has peaked. We are, if you will, in the process of descent. That’s descent, not dissent. My non-Jewish friends say fondly on hearing this new outburst of skepticism from me: “How Jewish.”

What are the signs or cultural signals that suggest this? I will list three — though there are others I leave for you to discern.

1) Computers are not Jewish. Computers have come into their own as we enter the 21st century. They are driving our economy, changing the ways in which we live and work, functioning as the successor to our most recent post-industrial revolution. Forget MIT and bright Jewish computer scientists/entrepreneurs and Route 128 circling Boston during the first computer revolution 40 plus years ago. Silicon Valley and the new computer centers in the Pacific northwest are not driven in large numbers by Jewish technicians, programmers or entrepreneurs.

2) The Internet is not Jewish. The internet of course is the newest development in media to grab the attention and allegiance of the mass market. It follows, almost in a straight line, the shifts from vaudeville to films and radio to television — each of which was importantly served by Jews in the role of entrepreneur, producer, writer and agent. The flow of culture here went from a production center outward, into the open market.

To be sure the Internet has Jewish components, but the dynamic flows from the receiver inward. We join a Jewish chat room or Jewish singles. It is all highly focused, custom tailored, self selected. It is a very different kind of mass market. Non-Jews go their way; we go ours.

3) The new cities are not Jewish. Remember Lenny Bruce’s famous line: “In New York everyone is Jewish. In the Midwest no one is Jewish.” Well the same seems to apply to the new cities — Houston, Phoenix, San Diego and Seattle.

These are cities where shifts of population and growth are taking place, but they lack central cores that attract Jews.

Boston, where I once lived, was dominated by New England Brahmins and the children and grandchildren of Irish and Italian immigrants. Jews played only a minor role in the politics of the city; nor were we key players in banking or real estate or publishing. But Harvard and MIT in the second half of the 20th century soon had strong Jewish pluralities, as did the very important psychiatric and psychoanalytic communities. And so, despite no strong Jewish presence in business and politics, the culture of the city had a very real Jewish feel to it. Not so the new cities.

We live in a world where our (modern) landscape is constantly being altered. It is possible, I suppose, to posit that Jews have survived and even prospered precisely because we have become (of necessity) so adaptive. In fact, we have been so successful at adapting that the culture in America has come to resemble us, with many Americans taking on our sensibility, as we sail easily through it.

Gary Rosenblatt wonders “if America accepts Jews and their culture too readily” so that we might “lose our distinctiveness as a people.” That seems to be a serious concern as we enter the new century. But, if I am correct, and we are now about to proceed through some decline, what should be our next great worry? That word, worry, is almost axiomatic in the Jewish community.

Are we to expect a resurgence of anti-Semitism? Further assimilation, once our appeal for the wider society has diminished? A turn toward orthodoxy and a holding fast to Judaism and our Jewish traditions? My own guess is: Yes, to all of the above, but in modest to small numbers.

Rather I expect that most of us will continue our adaptive ways. By now it’s probably a mix of genetic and learned behavior. It will mean greater uncertainty and increased flux. And for those of us who wish still to remain Jewish, as well as for those who wish to kick-start a moribund affiliation, it will mean redefining once again who we are as Jews and what it means to be Jewish in America. That’s what happens in altered landscapes: It’s usually not possible to stand still. —Gene Lichtenstein