Newsweek Study of American Jews Was “factual” but Not Quite

An editor I knew many years ago had a habit of peering over the rim of his glasses while reading copy, mumbling to himself, then calling over the reporter who had just handed him the news story and asking menacingly: “This story is factual, but is it actual.” The temptation was extremely strong to ask those who prepared, wrote, edited and approved the special section in the March 1 issue of Newsweek, “The American Jew,” whether the study was actual despite the “facts” that were presented. Basically, this Newsweek study failed to get down to tachlis (nitty-gritty) by ignoring, except for an allusion or hint, an essential element that is revolutionizing Jewish life in America: the rising tide of Jewish national consciousness among a growing segment of Jewish youth, a segment referred to quite frequently within the Jewish community as the “new bread.” These are the Jewish youths profoundly committed to Jewish values but turned off by what they consider to be the lack of response within the “Jewish establishment.” The Newsweek study failed to deal with or analyze this development which is taking the form of a struggle for Jewish liberation from the galut assimilationist mentality pervasive in the “older generation.” But it is precisely this struggle which is reorienting the thinking and priorities of the Jewish communities throughout the country in a much more subtle way than is the response by the entire Jewish community – old and new generation – to the plight of Soviet Jewry and the vital needs of Israel.

The basic deficiency of the Newsweek study was that it cast the Jewish community as a whole in the mold of being a WASH (White Anglo-Saxon Hebrew) community. It tantalizingly revealed just enough of the conflicts going on between the generations without focusing on the nature of this conflict, the objectives of the Jewish new breed, and the forms it is currently taking. Instead, the study focused on what it termed “a small but clamorous action group,” namely, the Jewish Defense League. What this succeeded in doing was merely to centralize a fringe phenomenon in the Jewish community and avoid dealing with the historically legitimate expressions and aspirations of Jewish youths struggling to vitalize the Jewish community. The whole fascinating development of how Jewish youths deal with concepts such as liberation, community democracy, and defense of Jewish values and life styles was missing from the study. Reading Newsweek one would never suspect that there is any ferment within the Jewish community aside from the JDL. Growing numbers of Jewish youths, especially on campuses, are rejecting the ” Americanization” of Jewish life styles and ideals and are rallying around the quest for Jewish identity.

NEW BREED OF JEWISH YOUTH ‘COMMITTEDLY JEWISH,’ SEEK TO REAFFIRM IDENTITY

Rabbi Oscar Groner, assistant national director of B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations, in a recent discussion of this development, defined the new breed as “committedly Jewish.” He emphasized that this did not “necessarily mean religiously or traditionally Jewish.” What it did mean, he observed, was that there are Jewish students “who have been affected by the Six-Day War and the continuing Middle East crisis and who may use as their model the various black, activist, ethnic movements. These are not Jewish radicals but radical Jews.” These radical Jews are radical about their Jewishness and judge the Left and the Third World from the standpoint of Jewish identity, Jewish interests and Jewish concern. Rabbi Groner further identified this type of student as radically Jewish in another sense. “He is,” the rabbi noted, “dissatisfied with the Jewish community. His action-mindedness leads him to a confrontation in support of positive Jewish identity. He not only demonstrates at the Russian Embassy, but also at the office of the Jewish Federation. He considers Jewish education and Jewish identity to be top priorities for the Jewish community, and he demands that the community allocate its resources accordingly.” This attitude was exemplified when the Jewish Activist League, a group on the Brandeis University campus, issued a declaration which stated, in part: “Our perspectives should not be mistakenly identified with the self-hatred that is typical of some American Jews…We proudly identify as Jews and are firmly committed to a survival of Israel and to the creative continuity of Jewish life.”

Others of this new breed contend that the assimilationist mentality of their elders, which affects a loss of identity, can be eliminated either by aliya or by affirming Jewish life styles and conditions wherever they live. This has given rise to Jewish communal living and studies such as the Havurot in Boston and New York. Some, like the Students for Peace Organization of the Jewish Theological Seminary, set up a speakers bureau last summer and sent seminary students to speak at Jewish groups to mobilize Jewish opinion against the war in Southeast Asia and lobbied in Washington for anti-war legislation. One group of students, concerned with the continuity of Jewish culture, issued a complaint not long ago that their parents’ bookshelves are filled with books by Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, existential philosophy, psychological tomes by Carl Jung and sociological works by Max Weber. But, these students continued, there were no books by Sholem Aleichem, Mendele Mocher Sforim, Chaim Nachman Bialek, Theodore Herzl, Salo Baron, Moses Hess or Martin Buber. To reaffirm their Jewish identity, this new breed has begun to organize itself in political groups and around student newspapers which reflect the broad scope of political views from Orthodox to Socialist-Zionist. They have launched Free Jewish Universities off the campuses and campaigned for and won the establishment of Judaics courses on many campuses.

There are some 35 radical Jewish groups and some 40 radical Jewish on – and off- campus newspapers with an estimated reading public of some 300,000. Newsweek also failed to deal with the deep-going concern among many- youths and adults – that the vitality of the Jewish community requires an arena for minority Jewish views: an arena for dissent and disputation within the Jewish community. What the “factual” Newsweek study pointed to, in spite of itself, is the imperative need for Jewish community leaders and intellectuals to undertake an actual study of the American Jew.