The conventional explanation for Israel\’s more controversial measures, including, in particular, the security fence under construction and the new marriage law passed by the Knesset, is that these are responses to the ongoing conflict.
All this week there\’s been some strange goings-on at the intersection of Us and Them.
The Los Angeles Times recently ran a story, \”A Clouded View of U.S. Jews\” (Oct. 9, 2002), which related the results of conflicting polls taken to determine Jewish population numbers in America. One study claimed numbers dipped slightly to 5.2 million, while a second poll claimed the Jewish population increased to 6.7 million.
Reactions to the Times\’ numbers were as diverse as the respondents. Some called for an increase in Jewish education and outreach, while others proposed we should increase our numbers by abandoning the traditional reticence to proselytizing and put more resources into embracing potential Jews. I couldn\’t disagree more.
A lot of the problems and promise of Los Angeles Jewish life were on display last Tuesday evening in Bob and Marcia Gold\’s living room.
Stephen Hoffman said he only learned of the missing data Tuesday, one week before the information from the NJPS about Jewish identity and intermarriage was due to get released at the annual UJC gathering, which brings together much of the organized American Jewish world.
This is the American Jewish world, by the numbers, as revealed in the just-released National Jewish Population Survey 2000-2001 (NJPS):
When Adam Bergman researched colleges toward the end of his senior year at Milken High School, he looked very closely at the quality of their soccer teams and not so closely at the size of their Jewish populations.
A leading Arab think tank is backing an old strategy — to defeat the Jewish State from within by encouraging the growth of its Arab population.
The new U.S. census figures have generated banner headlines this month, though no one seems to have a clue what those numbers portend. The big news, of course, is that America\’s Latino population has ballooned almost 60 percent in the past decade, surpassing 35 million. More than 43 percent of Californians younger than 18 are now Hispanic, compared with about 35 percent a decade ago. In both the city and county of Los Angeles, Latinos have replaced whites as the largest ethnic group.
You don\’t have to be a rocket scientist to see why the Orthodox were seriously undercounted.
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