Major changes in the Jewish community of the United States and transformation of its religious and cultural values were forecast here this weekend by two well known historians of the American Jewish scene.
In separate articles in the current National Jewish Monthly, publication of B’nai B’rith, Profs. Oscar Handlin of Harvard and Jacob R. Marcus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, predict that under the impact of suburban life, choking off of immigration, decreasing anti-Semitism, intermarriage and pressures to conform to a non-Jewish homogeneity, the American Jewry which survives in the year 2000 will be substantially different from what it is today.
Pulitzer Prize winner Dr, Handlin asserts that “the danger is not so much that the Jewish community will disappear, but that its culture will become a museum piece, preserved out of curiosity and ancestral piety, but devoid of meaning.”
Dr. Marcus, one-time president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, sees: “A tight Jewish community will have to come into being (and) a new fusion type of religion may well be in the making, ” He believes that distinctions among the Orthodox, Conservative and Reform wings of Jewry will be erased by amalgamation.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
