Time magazine this week explored the question, “What it Means to be Jewish” and like its sister publication, Newsweek, which did a similar treatment about a year ago, discovered that it means different things to different Jews. The Time cover story, appearing during Passover week, traced the many paths followed by America’s approximately six million Jews in their quest to find or to reaffirm their Jewish identity–a movement which, according to Time, though stemming from the Nazi holocaust, was given new impetus by the Six-Day War.
The Time piece emphasized the “broad spectrum” of Jewishness, from “ethnic or existential Judaism” through “community of faith Judaism” to Orthodoxy and ultra-Orthodoxy. According to a Time cover note, the story was compiled by three staffers–Religion writer Mayo Mobs, a Catholic; correspondent Richard Ostling, a Protestant; and reporter-researcher Clare Mead Rosen, who, the magazine said, “was completing six months training for her conversion from Catholicism to Judaism.” The results of their labors, according to one knowledgeable observer of Jewish affairs was to touch all the well worn bases, but only fleetingly.
While the article paid respects to the resurgence of interest in Judaism by Jewish youth; the proliferation of Judaica chairs at prestigious American universities; the “free universities” of Judaism; the “havurat” movement; the identification with the plight of Soviet Jewry; and the pervasive identification of American Jews with Israel, it neglected many key areas of basic concern to Jews.
REAL PROBLEMS IGNORED
As other publications have done in the past, Time pointed out that the number of Jewish high school graduates entering college is proportionately higher than for the general population; and that the median income of Jewish families is substantially greater than that of American families generally. But the six-page article made no mention of the Jewish poor and elderly poor or their struggle to obtain a fair share of anti-poverty funds.
The article noted briefly that “The Black’s anger overtly against Israel, at least partly reflected domestic friction.” But it did not mention the clash between the Black and Jewish communities over poverty funding or housing as reflected in the controversial Forest Hills low-income project. No Jewish political attitudes were explored.
Time observed that “many younger Jews followed their contemporaries into the New Left or exotic religious movements such as Krishna Consciousness, Scientology or even the Jesus revolution.” It did not mention the revolt of many committed young Jews against the so-called Jewish Establishment or the burgeoning of the student Jewish press.
According to Time’s cover note, the article’s authors “compiled six shelves of books and a foot high stack of original research.” But the authorities quoted in the article were, for the most part those quoted in similar explorations of Judaism in America that have appeared in other periodicals and newspapers, and in previous Time pieces.
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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.
