The future of the American jewish community:Lo Zu Haderech

Abstract

I am pleased to be able to respond to Professor Elazar's paper. He was my undergraduate advisor at Temple University, appropriately enough in the context of his paper, in the Department of American Studies. Since then I have had the opportunity to continue to leara from him both in the United States and in Israel. His insights into Jewish life, and especially American Jewish life, have stimulated me and helped shape my own approach to the study of this community. Nevertheless, I do not share all of his conclusions concerning the future of the Jewish community. In particular, I am pleased to report that the Jeremiads are not dead yet. I therefore wish to focus my response on his reasons for cautious optimism by raising an issue that must be addressed if we are to accept his modestly optimistic view of the future of the American Jewish community. Here I part company with our distinguished awardee on a critical point, the possibility of the renewal of a sense of covenant under the present circumstances in American Jewish life. Elazar argues that at least some of the innovations coming from within the formal institutions of the American Jewish community may have the effect of strengthen ing the sense of community and covenant. Since he does not specify which programs he thinks are accomplishing these goals it is impossible to say with certainty whether he would agree to any extent with the views I am about to present. However, I think the bottom line is that rather than building a stronger community, much of what is going on today, especially under the fashionable rubric of "Jewish Identity Programming, " may accelerate the process of assimilation and further undermine the sense of community and covenant that he identifies as so critical to Jewish continuity. At its core "identity" is a psychological construct most often used to refer to qualities of the individual rather than to relations between the individual and larger social structures. I believe that the word "identity" was well chosen in that it reflects an emphasis in "Jewish Identity Programming" on the personal and psychological, on how a person feels rather than communal (convenental) and social concerns, i.e., on what a person is committed to. Further, the selection of the