I recently spent a day in a room with 27 academics, rabbis and communal activists trying to figure out what to do about the Jews.
The Wilstein Institute convened this June 9 meeting of local Jewish leaders — Wilstein’s term, not mine — to discuss the current state of Jewish life and devise ways to improve it now and for the future.
It was called the "Visioneers Conference," which Wilstein Institute Director Dr. David Gordis said should not conjure up images of yarmulkes with mouse ears, but reflect a desire to identify the challenges to Jewish life in America and find ways to meet them. "Do we stand on the sideline as historical forces take over," Gordis asked, "or do we try to intervene?"
Dr. Lawrence Rubin, a Wilstein senior fellow, detailed some of those historical forces in a thoughtful and balanced paper that served as the jumping-off point for the discussion. The paper documents what has now become the familiar litany of woe: rising intermarriage, declining affiliation (hence, aging membership), decreased Jewish literacy, flattened fundraising campaigns.
In short, there are fewer and fewer Jews and fewer and fewer active, involved Jews among them.
A large proportion of these uninvolved Jews — especially in Southern California — are what one participant called "neoethnics." I call them Brunch Davidians — these are Jews whose cultural identity is sated, literally and figuratively, with weekly doses of deli food and viewings of shows like "Seinfeld" and Larry David’s "Curb Your Enthusiasm."
The pervasiveness of Jewish culture in American life gives Brunch Davidians enough sense of an ethnic identity that they need or want no further involvement. These people reflect well on America, a free and tolerant nation that has embraced Jewish culture as its own. But they also present a challenge to educators and organizers, who want to transform an inchoate ethnic identity into a more serious pursuit of Jewish learning and involvement.
Then there are Jews who seek a personal path toward Jewish fulfillment, and who are content to dip in and out of the communal structures as suits their purpose.
"About 60 to 85 percent of Jews join a synagogue at one time or another," said the University of Judaism’s Dr. Ron Wolfson, "and just as many leave."
Jewish institutions, from synagogues to federations to, yes, newspapers, will have to learn to meet the needs of these drive-by Jews. For them, as sociologist Bethamie Horowitz has written, "Jewish identity is not a fixed factor in one’s life, but rather a matter that parallels personal growth and personal development."
It also parallels the times in which we live. Historian David Myers reminded participants that "alienation and drift are not novel to the Jewish experience. There has been a cyclical pattern of creative response emerging out of crisis."
It was strange and perhaps even counterproductive then that the otherwise well-intentioned conference itself had the format and esprit of a House subcommittee hearing on Missouri corn yields. Everyone spoke in order, no one raised his voice (there was a handful of women) and the conferees in no way reflected the diversity of Southern California’s Jewish activism, rich with the vitality of Israeli, Russian, Persian, Orthodox and Sephardic Jews. When meetings begin with the directive to "think outside the box," you can be nearly certain the box has already won. So, surprise, nothing visionary came out of the conference.
We do lack Vision with a capital V — that big, sweeping Idea that will upset the poached-salmon-and-after-dinner-speech orderliness of Jewish life and force us to confront the meaning of our mission as Jews, Americans and human beings. The last Jew to blow through town with one of those Ideas was Theodore Herzl, and he’s been dead 100 years.
But if we lack Vision, we do possess visions. Many of the people in the room at the Skirball that day have created and implemented ideas that have reshaped a corner of the Jewish world for the better. Many, many more outside the room have done the same.
Southern California, with its diverse and dispersed Jewish population, has been at the forefront of innovation. "The best thing about this community is that it is disorganized," said one participant.
Disorganization creates its own cycle of crisis and creativity. The Book of Genesis reminds us that God spontaneously created the world out of chaos.
Case in point: Late that night on the way home, I tuned to "Loveline" on KROQ-FM. The guest was Nikki Ziering, Playboy’s July cover girl. She was in the midst of telling the hosts that she was Jewish.
They didn’t believe her. But she said she started taking a 22-week course on Judaism in Southern California prior to her marriage to Ian Ziering. The marriage didn’t last, but the lessons did.
"I didn’t intend to convert," she said, "but the religion is so beautiful. It’s all about family and having good values." So Nikki Ziering went to the mikvah (ritual bath), sat before a panel of rabbis and is now telling millions of teenagers how wonderful Judaism is.
I only wish Nikki Ziering had been among the Visioneers that day. She would have reminded us that the Big Idea that can rescue the Jewish future is … Judaism. Pass it on.
