Jewish life in the United States will change radically over the next 40 years as a result of strongly developing economic, cultural, educational, religious and organizational trends that have emerged within the last decade, it was predicted here today by Dr. Jacob R. Marcus, noted Jewish historian and past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, rabbinical body of the Reform branch of Judaism.
Dr. Markus, who is president of the American Jewish Historical Society, spoke at a two day conference and seminar sponsored by the CCAR. He cited 10 recent trends which he said are beginning to alter American Jewish life. He listed these as follows:
1. With the decline of Orthodox and classical Reform Judaism, the Conservatives and Neo-Reformers will bring about a distinctive type of American Judaism. The American Judaism of the future will continue to have Conservative and Reform institutional bodies but will be marked by similar rituals, forms of worship and religious mores.
2. The Jewish community is beginning to open its doors more widely than ever before to anyone who calls himself a Jew. This tolerance will increase rather than abate, especially in view of the rapid growth of inter-marriage.
3. The rapid rise of Parochial and private schools in the future to cope with the decline of the public school system due to lack of public funds will give impetus to the rise of Jewish parochial schools.
4. The Jewish community now served by some 90 independent privately owned weekly newspapers will be served by newspapers owned and controlled by the community itself. These newspapers will have no editorial policy. There will be a truce on all ideological differences in the interest of maintaining communal peace, even if it has to come at this price.
5. Jews will be found largely in the suburbs. They will feel themselves far more secure than at any time in the past, either in Europe or America. As a result, today’s Jewish defense agencies will turn to the work of strengthening the community from within, building its morale, rather than to meeting outside calumnies, threats and discriminations.
WORK OF JEWISH PHILANTHROPIC AGENCIES WILL PASS TO GOVERNMENT
6. The work now being done on a large scale by Jewish philanthropic and health agencies will pass to government with the widening of the social security system and the rise of socialized medicine. The basic problem to be faced by the Jewish community in the next generation will be gerontological, the problem of the aged. This was no problem in the past because of the general low expectancy of life.
7. The Jewish community will also develop vocational services on a broad community level to cope with the increasing automation of American economic life. The Jewish community, which today has twice as many college graduates proportionately as does the non-Jewish community, will seek to solve the problem of cybernation through better education and the development of needed skills.
8. There will take place over the next 40 years the final emergence of the Jewish Community Center and YMHA as the suburban club of the Jewish middle classes. Huge million dollar buildings will rise incorporating health clubs, bowling alleys, and kosher-style snack bars. These will be a far cry from the slum settlement houses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
9. The numerous Jewish agencies that proliferate on the American scene as independent bodies will be subordinated in each community to an over-all Jewish Community Council that will coordinate the activities of those agencies deemed necessary and will control their budgets. The Council will be concerned with the welfare of the community as a whole, raising funds centrally for local, national and overseas causes. The Council will be representative of all elements in the community.
10. The synagogue will continue to occupy a primary place. The synagogue was central in Jewish communal life during the first days of Jewish settlement in America over 300 years ago, and has never lost its place in motivating Jewish life and in serving, if necessary, as a place of dissent.
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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.
