U.S. Jews Should Do Well on the Socioeconomic Scale During Next Quarter Century, Expert Predicts

A leading manpower expert predicted here today that American Jews should be able to maintain their above average position on the social-economic scale during the final quarter of the 20th century. But he also saw certain factors that could mitigate against this.

The forecast was made by Dr. Eli Ginzberg, Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business at the closing luncheon session of the American Jewish Committee’s National Executive Council meeting. The NEC, the Committee’s top policy-making body, opened here last Friday. Ginzberg, who is chairman of the National Commission for Manpower Policy, said that the prospects for a stable economy were good and that Jews would benefit from the continuing decline of religious discrimination.

“The only major threat that most Jews in the United States face is a soft American economy that is unable to provide jobs and earning opportunities for a sizable proportion of the population,” Ginzberg said.

He also listed several psychological factors that might have negative effects on the prosperity of American Jews. Among these, he said, was the”current and prospective oversupply of college-trained persons” which would “slow the progress of many young Jews now entering the labor force”; and the “rapid. growth of the South and Southwest with their relatively sparse Jewish populations and the retardation of the rate of growth in the North where most Jews are concentrated.” Ginzberg specifically mentioned the Orthodox Jewish community as one “whose practices inhibit their occupational advance because many shun secular colleges and are disinclined to have their women work.”

At an earlier session. Yehuda Rosenman, director of the AJCommittee’s Communal Affairs Department, presented a report containing the findings and recommendations of a three-year study by the AJCommittee’s Colloquium on Jewish Education and Jewish Identity.

It called for a major overhauling of the system of Jewish education in the U.S. aimed at in stilling a greater sense of Jewish Identity among Jewish youth. Rosenman stressed the importance of continuing Jewish education at the junior and senior high school levels because the teen years were a crucial period in the development of identity patterns.

“Unless a student attends school for a number of hours above the usual time spent by the great majority of elementary school students, whether in yeshivot, congregational or Sunday schools, there is no independent effect on Jewish identity from school attendance,” he said. The Colloquium also recommended increased Jewish educational opportunities for college students.

In that connection. Rosenman noted that “while there were only three chairs of Jewish studies in the United States a few decades ago, the number of colleges and universities offering instruction in this area now number more than 300.”