The Emergence of a Continental Jewish Community:
Implications for Federations
Daniel J. Elazar
Since the founding of the first federation in Boston nearly a
century ago, the federation movement has demonstrated its ability
to reflect the emergent character of American Jewry and to
successfully adapt to the changing American scene. The idea of
federated giving in the local community was itself a major step
forward toward building framing institutions for American Jewry.
Subsequently the development of the idea of federated service
agencies took the American Jewish community another step forward,
to be followed by the creation of countrywide service agencies
for local federations, with the Council of Jewish Federations
first and foremost among them. With the rise of Nazism and the
coming of World War II the federations took another step forward
to integrate fundraising for Israel, overseas needs and local
needs. Then, after World War II, the federation movement took
another step forward to adapt to the demands of what had become
the largest and most powerful Jewish community in the world by
adding community planning to its responsibilities, thereby truly
becoming the framing institutions of American Jewry.
The Challenge of a New Frontier
Now the federation movement is faced with yet another challenge
which will require an even greater adaptation, a challenge which
grows out of the changes taking place in American society as a
whole and American Jewish life in particular in the second
generation of the post-modern epoch.
The federation movement was born at the very end of the modern
epoch as a response to the problem of creating a united, cohesive
Jewish community on a voluntary basis in a free society. The
modern epoch came to an end with World War II, the Holocaust and
the reestablishment of the State of Israel. The federation
movement already in place was able to rise magnificently to the
first challenges of the post-modern epoch.
For America as a whole, the post-war generation was marked by the
metropolitanization of society, the dropping of the last barriers
to full participation by Jews and other minorities, American
assumption of responsibility as leader of the free world - all
these factors provided great opportunities for American Jewry,
both individually and collectively. Metropolitanization and the
new technologies and industries that grew up to serve the
metropolitan society offered great opportunities for Jews, among
others, to prosper, often to prosper mightily, establishing a new
resource base for the federations to tap. The new openness of
American society enabled Jews to rise to the highest positions
within it and to become, in terms of general education, the best
educated Jewish community in history. This, too, redounded to
the benefit of organized Jewish life, producing a more
sophisticated leadership, voluntary and professional, for Jewish
institutions and a greatly expanded Jewish influence in American
politics, culture and society. Finally Americans' new world
responsibilities made it easier for American Jewry to support
Israel in all the ways that it has.
Metropolitanization in North America was a continuation of the
great American frontier experience. but the metropolitan
frontier, like all frontiers, has come and gone. The Jews along
with other third wave immigration groups migrated up to what
political analyst Samuel Lubbell referred to as "the old tenement
trail" to the suburbs, established their institutions and what
they thought would be their new world, only to see their children
move on to yet newer frontiers. Moreover the character of the
metropolitan frontier was such that often they themselves had to
move on, either because they were pushed as the result of
changing neighborhoods or because they were pulled to even better
or more attractive locations.
For all intents and purposes, the metropolitan frontier ended in
the mid-1970s along with the end of the first post-war
generation. By now we are 10 years into the second generation of
the post-modern epoch. We are also well into the opening stages
of a new frontier, one which is no longer characterized by
metropolitanization, that is to say, the development of a
suburban and even exurban periphery around a core city which has
become megalopolitan, based on settlement patterns that involve
continuous belts of cities and rurban (mixed rural and urban)
areas strong out for hundreds of miles, with no central core.
This new rurban frontier is a product of the cybernetic
revolution. It is linked by computer-based technologies and
telecommunications and energized by cybernetically-based or
related industries that a few years ago did not even exist.
For Jewish communities and their federations this is a wrenching
change. The first federations were founded in the days when
urbanization was in full swing in the United States, when America
was enmeshed in the urban-industrial frontier (that followed the
original rural land frontier and preceded the metropolitan-
technological frontier). It is not surprising then, that Jews
settled in the hearts of the major American cities. The larger
the city, the larger the Jewish population. Jewish institutions
that we know today were all formed in those great urban
concentrations, particularly in New York, the greatest of them
all. There is where opportunity lay, where newcomers could find
a place at the end of the nineteenth century and where Jews could
be close to one another.
While metropolitanization broke up those concentrations and led
to the disappearance of the Jewish street in favor of the Jewish
suburb, the overall pattern continued. The Jewish suburb was
still closely attached to the great central cities of North
America. The lives and fortunes of Jews were still tied to the
big city at the center and federations and other Jewish
organizations were simply able to expand their perimeters to take
in the suburbs around the central city that seemed at first to be
merely extensions of the city itself.
All this is being disrupted by the rurban-cybernetic frontier.
America's great cities, for a century the centers of American
life, are becoming increasingly peripheral. They were never quite
as important as they seemed to their residents, particularly the
Jews who had so little contact with the countryside. According
to the U.S. Census Bureau, an urban place in the United States is
one with 2,500 people or more living at a certain density. Even
by that definition it was not until 1890 that a third of all
Americans lived in urban places and not until 1920 that the
figure reached half. While by 1980 that figure approached 75
percent, it is misleading since the Census Bureau is still
talking about places of 2,500 people or more as urban.
If we look at large cities, those of over 250,000 population,
they reached their peak as a percentage of the population of the
United States in 1930 with 33.5 percent or approximately
one-third of the total. By 1980 they had dropped to 19.9 percent
or under one-fifth. The situation is even more clouded with
regard to the importance of the great urban centers. Cities of
over a million peaked at 12.3 percent of the total U.S.
population in 1930. By 1980 they represented 7.7 percent and
falling. Those are the cities which in their heyday contained
approximately half of the Jewish population in the United States.
Moreover, the rurban-cybernetic frontier is a frontier of small
cities. In 1950 only 10.1 percent of Americans lived in cities
of under 10,000 and only 23.8 percent in cities under 50,000. By
1980, 39.6 percent of Americans lived in cities of under 50,000;
17.1 percent of them in cities of less than 10,000. Those who
live in rural areas now constitute 23.3 percent of the total
American population, less than 5 percent of whom are farmers.
Hence a whopping 62.9 percent of all Americans are located
outside of even medium-size cities.
Some might argue that taking big cities independently of their
metropolitan areas distorts the situation. According to the
Census Bureau, in 1900 less than one-third of all Americans lived
in metropolitan areas. By 1950 a majority of all Americans were
located in metropolitan areas. The percentage would exceed
two-thirds sometime in the 1960s and peak at 68.6 percent in
1970. By 1980 a reversal had taken place with more growth in
non-metropolitan than in metropolitan areas. Here, too, there is
a definitional problem. The Census Bureau has changed the
definition of what constitutes a metropolitan area several times,
each time expanding the coverage. Thus at one time any county
with a central city of at least 50,000 in population and a
certain percentage of commuters outside the municipal boundaries
was considered metropolitan. Today any country of 100,000
population, even if it has no city within it, is defined as
metropolitan. At no point did central cities represent more than
a third of the population of the United States. In 1960, at the
heyday of suburbanization, 31.9 percent of the American
population lived in cities, 30.3 percent in suburbs, and 37.8
were non-metropolitan. By 1970, the percentage in cities had
dropped to 30.6, non-metropolitan had dropped to 32.9, and
suburbs were up to 36.5.
Even at the peak of metropolitanization, at least one third of
Americans lived in rural areas or urban areas outside of these
broadly defined metropolitan regions. In fact, these definitions
a sheepherder in San Bernadino County is a resident of a
metropolitan area and Joplin, Missouri is the center of one. If
we take as a true metropolitan area one with a center city or
cities with at least 500,000 people and a total population of at
least a million, at the highest point the large metropolitan
population never reached 50 percent of the U.S. total. It is now
dropping toward 45 percent. Not only that, of the 35
metropolitan areas of over a million population in 1980, 8
actually lost population in absolute terms. They include such
important Jewish communities as New York, Philadelphia, Detroit,
Cleveland, Pittsburg, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Buffalo.
Moreover, outside of the sunbelt, every major city over 200,000
population except Columbus, Ohio lost population between 1970 and
1980.
By 1980 even the definition of a metropolitan statistical area
reflected the emerging rurban frontier. All but two of the
metropolitan areas of over 2 million officially had more than one
central city, with the larger ones having three or more and the
largest and smallest having no real central cities at all.
The point of all this is that the old urban-metropolitan pattern
which has served as the geodemographic basis for Jewish communal
organization since the beginning of Jewish life in the United
States is no longer viable. Jews are in the lead in the move
onto the rurban-cybernetic frontier, including movement within
various megalopolitan regions in the United States -- the great
citybelts along the northeastern coast from Maine to Virginia,
the Florida east and west coasts, the Gulf Coast, southern
California, the Bay Area - Sacramento Basin, etc. The true
impact of this on Jewish population mobility is not known to us
since it is precisely in those smaller communities that are
receiving Jewish population that local population studies are few
and far between. However we can see the trend by looking at the
results of the studies of the larger sunbelt communities. Where
such studies have been undertaken, they have in every case
produced unexpectedly higher numbers of Jews than estimated or
expected. We do know that, whereas a generation ago 84 percent
of all Jews lived in the northeast, today only 56 percent do.
One other aspect of the migration to the South and West that is
cause is for concern is that Jews moving to the Sun Belt are for
the most part moving from areas with a strong culture of giving
and communal responsibility to areas notably lax in both
respects. Hence they will find no tradition of involvement or
giving in their new communities. If we are fortunate, there will
be enough migrants to change the cultural pattern by virtue of
their presence before they discover local norms, but chances are
that until such a critical mass is present, local norms will
prevail and may indeed erode the more desirable habits of other
places. This seems to be what has happened up to now. Only a
massive organizational effort spearheaded by CJF is likely to
bring those communities up to expectations. This may involve
lending key campaign and community organizing personnel to those
communities, providing seed money to enable them to strengthen
their organizational capacity, or whatever, but it will have to
be done somehow.
The point I wish to make is that the transformation of the
environment within which the American Jewish community and its
federations must function is far more complex than the
conventional wisdom suggests. It is far more than a migration
from suburbs to exurbs, problematic as that is for the
maintenance of Jewish institutions and provision of Jewish
services. It is far more complex than migration from the
northeast to the south and west, with all of the problems that
brings in terms of keeping track of Jews and keeping them
affiliated.
Responding to the Redistribution of Governmental Power
One of the consequences of the newest frontier is a shift in the
orientation of American domestic affairs from the federal
government and the cities to the states. It has already been
noted that the big cities reached their demographic peak in the
United States in the 1930s. They reached the peak of their
political power in Washington a generation later, in the 1960s.
This almost exactly parallels the situation of the American
farmer. Demographically the farm population reached its peak in
the 1890s while politically the farmers reached the peak of their
power in Washington at the time of the New Deal. Both cases
reflect the generation lag between demographic realities and the
ability to translate those realities into maximum political power
in the national arena.
The power of the cities in the 1960s at the time of the Great
Society may have deluded many people into thinking that the
alliance between Washington and the cities represented the future
of American government and politics. Since Ronald Reagan's
assumption of the office of President in 1981 we have learned
differently. Reagan articulated and accelerated the shift of
power, responsibility, and initiative from Washington to the
states, but actually it began earlier at the time of Watergate
when a paralyzed federal administration could not respond
properly to the oil crisis and the shortages it brought in its
wake, the truckers' strike, and then the absorption of refugees
from Southeast Asia. In all three cases, the governors stepped
in to deal with the problem and did so effectively. In doing so,
they rediscovered that the states are polities and not merely
middle managers, and that governors have both the authority and
the power to initiate and act.
By the mid-1970s, the American people had lost confidence in
Washington as a result of Watergate and the failures of the Great
Society. Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter was elected to the
presidency precisely because he was an outsider who seemed to
offer the promise of doing something about Washington's
overbearing behavior. His lack of success did not change public
perceptions. On the contrary, the people then choose Reagan who
articulated this anti-Washington stance even more
comprehensively, reviving the concept of state authority and
powers long unheard of outside of academic circles and then
proceeding to do what he could to dismantle federal domestic
programs. While the federal government continues to be very
active, even on the domestic front, and will continue to be, by
now it is clear to virtually all observers of the American system
that the initiative for domestic action has passed to the states,
most of whom have chosen to exercise it. This is particularly
important today when federations are acquiring substantial funds
from government sources for the health, welfare and social
services which they and their agencies provide.
This shift is also new for the Jewish community. Since the
American Jews of Eastern European background have come to the
fore in the American Jewish community, they have looked to
Washington as they have looked to the cities, and generally have
ignored the states and state government. Now that will no longer
do. Some federations have already begun to respond to this new
situation. The federations of Illinois, led by the Chicago
Federation, have established an office in Springfield, the
capital of Illinois, and the New York Federation has long
maintained relations with Albany. These kinds of relationships
will become even more important in the next decade as they are
strengthened by the changes in settlement patterns brought about
by the rurban-cybernetic frontier.
Becoming Fully Part of World Jewry
A third new development in the United States affecting its Jewish
community is America's new integration into the world economy.
Part of the transformation of the United States in the second
postwar generation has been its transformation from the greatest
economic power in the free world to a beleaguered economy
dependent more than ever before on outside sources of energy and
other natural resources, the world's largest debtor nation,
dependent on infusions of foreign capital to keep its government
and industry working and increasingly dependent on others for
basic manufactured goods as it has priced itself out of the
market. We all know the story. It is in the headlines every
day. What this means is that the United States, which assumed
world leadership after World War II under conditions whereby it
gave to the world and managed the world's economic affairs from
Washington, is now dependent upon that selfsame world for its own
economic survival and prosperity. In the first postwar
generation, while Americans were no longer isolated from the
world, they could choose when and where to be involved and when
and where not to be. In the second postwar generation much of
that choice has been taken away.
This is increasingly true for American Jews as well. At the
beginning of the first postwar generation in 1948 the American
Jewish community comprised at least half of all of world Jewry
and was the world's most settled Jewish community. Today
American Jewry has dropped to about 40 percent of world Jewry and
with the exception of Jews in the Communist bloc, all the other
Jewish communities of significance are also settled.
The changing demographic ratio between American Jewry and Israel
is most instructive. In 1948 there were almost ten American Jews
for every Jew in Israel. By 1960 that ratio had dropped to three
to one. Today it is approximately 1.7 to 1. If the moderate
forecasts of the demographers are correct and American Jewry
starts losing numbers through assimilation through the remainder
of this generation, while Israeli Jewry continues to grow because
it is the only Jewish community of significance in the world with
a positive birthrate, some time before the year 2010 Israel will
pass the United States and become the largest Jewish community in
the world. Since Israel will acquire that status through the
decline of American Jewry, it is not something to be hoped for
but it is very possible.
This means that American Jewry, which until now has gone its own
way in developing an indigenous Jewish life, functioning on the
world arena only to provide relief or other assistance for their
Jewish brethren in difficulty "overseas," now must become
intimately involved in the give and take of world Jewry. The
growth of federation interest in the governance of the Jewish
Agency reflects this change. Up to now that interest has been
essentially manifested through an effort to impose American forms
of organization and standards of operation on the Agency, but
undoubtedly it will become a matter of give and take as American
Jews discover that they and Israel are not alone in the world and
that even with regard to Israel they can no longer claim the
status of senior partner. This involvement is all to the good
since it is the first major step towards shaping common
institutions for world Jewry in which all segments of the Jewish
world play a significant role.
On another related issue, American Jews have responded to the
"Who is a Jew?" issue from a strictly American perspective until
now. That is, based on the American pattern whereby 75-80
percent of all Jews identify religiously, all but 10 percent of
them with non-Orthodox religious movements. Now American Jews
are beginning to confront the reality of the rest of the world
where, on one hand, fully one third of all Jews may not identify
religiously at all while a significant majority of those who do
are either Orthodox or identify with Orthodoxy as the only
legitimate form of Jewish religious expression. Based on the
demographic studies, our Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has
estimated that 37 percent of world Jewry identifies as Orthodox,
30 percent identify with non-Orthodox religious movements, and
the remainder do not identify religiously at all.
This can and perhaps should lead in two directions: On one hand,
American Jews must develop a strategy that takes into account
that among the Jews of the world today Orthodoxy has more
adherents than any other stream. On the other, American
non-Orthodox movements may choose to make a more substantial
effort to reach out to Jews in other countries. The Reform
movement is already active in this regard and the Conservative
movement shows signs of becoming active, particularly in Latin
America and Israel.
For the moment, in countries outside of the United States even
those Jews who are not really Orthodox see Orthodoxy as the only
authentic form of Judaism, but this could change within the next
generation. In Latin America, for example, one man, a
Conservative rabbi, single-handedly established a strong
Conservative movement in Argentina that is now spreading
throughout the South American continent because conditions were
ripe for a religious revival on non-Orthodox terms. Potentially
similar developments could take place elsewhere. Whatever
happens it is clear that American Jewish religious patterns can
no longer survive in isolation any more than American Jewry can.
Either they will become worldwide or they are likely to whither
even in the United States, especially in the face of a resurgent
and militant Orthodoxy which is in a demographically stronger
position than any of the non-Orthodox movements.
This new American Jewish involvement in world Jewry has another
very practical dimension for the federation movement. Whereas
during the first postwar generation the non-American diaspora
tended to turn to Israel almost exclusively for assistance in
maintaining Jewish life, today increasingly those diaspora
communities are turning to American Jewry as well. Even earlier
when it came to funding, the Joint Distribution Committee played
a major role in Europe, Asia and Africa. In Europe that role was
enhanced by the efforts of the JDC to reconstruct European Jewry,
drawing on the American Jewish experience in communal
organization to do so wherever possible, but that was less
because they were asked to do so by the Europeans than because
they had the resources when no one else did. Where no such
compulsion existed as in Latin America or in the English-speaking
countries, American Jewry was much less involved than Israel.
Now diaspora communities have come to recognize that, as they
settle in, the American Jewish experience becomes relevant for
them and that American Jewry has experience and technical
expertise of use to them. Moreover because American Jewry is
also a diaspora community there often seems to be more of a
common language than there is with Israel. Thus American Jewry
is likely to be called upon for more assistance to other diaspora
communities in the future, not so much in the way of funding as
in ideas and organizational development -- what the federation
movement refers to as community planning and organization.
Canadian Jewry also has a special and distinctive role to play in
all this. With 300,000 Jews, the Canadian Jewish community is the
fifth or sixth largest in the world and the second or third
strongest in the diaspora institutionally and spiritually
stronger than the USSR, Britain and perhaps France as well.
Linked institutionally and culturally as it is to American Jewry,
on one hand, and to the rest of the diaspora, on the other, it
has a significant bridging role to play.
This does not mean that Israel will be excluded. On the
contrary, in Jewish education Israel's role is likely to increase
since Israel has been able to establish institutions for teacher
training and curriculum development that even American Jewry has
not been able to develop. What it means is that the American
Jewish community will have to cooperate with Israel not only in
those countries requiring the relief and rescue efforts of the
two but in those communities that are settled in the diaspora for
the long haul.
Beyond that, the federation movement will have to consider how
much Israeli involvement there should be in Jewish education in
North America. Until now, at least in the United States, the
rule has been that Israeli involvement should be minimal and
peripheral, mostly linked to the Israel experience. With the
potential expansion of the Jewish Agency's role in Jewish
education, this policy will need to be reviewed.
Dealing With Shifting Sources of Interest, Involvement, and
Resources
A fourth set of developments that must be taken into account are
the shifting sources of interest, involvement, and resources
among American Jews to be drawn on for Jewish communal life. The
new American Jewish interest seems to be politics. It is no
accident that AIPAC and the PACs are the fastest growing Jewish
groups. In an age in which religious commitment is increasingly
nominal for many people, the cosmopolitans in the Jewish
community, that is to say those who are not simply satisfied with
activities around the synagogue, find politics attractive. The
new political activity reflects the full integration of Jews into
American society. The involvement in politics is a good way to
combine the idea that one is doing something for the Jewish
people while at the same time gratifying personal desires to be
involved and to have some influence in public affairs.
In the synagogues, on the other hand, involvement is also very
personal but more in the way of seeking interpersonal social
links, some kind of spiritual fulfillment, or at least peace of
mind. Thus havurot have replaced the traditional synagogue
organizations as vehicles of involvement with the sisterhoods and
mens' clubs much diminished. Perhaps the only exception is
singles' groups where synagogues fill a new and very deeply felt
need.
In general there is a decline in involvement in traditional forms
of Jewish organization in favor of periodic "happenings" which
require little or no long-term commitment on the part of most
participants while providing the emotional satisfaction of
dramatic mass events. The American Jewish community has
institutionalized these happenings, from the GA and "super-
Sunday" to the annual CAGE conference. This has dual
implications. On one hand it is a sign of Jewish organizational
adaptation to new realities. On the other, the new realities
have some worrisome implications for Jewish organizational
continuity and existence.
The federation movement is less likely to be affected by this
since the governance role of the federations enables them to
capitalize on the new orientation of the "cosmopolitans."
Similarly the synagogues have less to worry about because they
still serve the localistic needs of Jews and no other institution
has come along that can do that as well. It is the other
organizations, the voluntary organizations that were the backbone
of Jewish life outside of the synagogue during the previous two
generations, that are suffering the most. Even so, the
federations have had to make and will continue to have to make
adaptations to this new reality.
American society has undergone another transition in the
post-modern epoch, particularly in the last two decades. It has
become a society resting on an ideology of hedonistic
individualism. According to this ideology, every person is not
only sovereign but should devote himself or herself to the
pursuit of what is personally pleasurable.
Let us call the baby for what it is. This is a kind of
neo-paganism. It is a direct assault on and repudiation of both
the original American and Jewish worldviews which saw in such a
"lifestyle," anarchy and blasphemy.
A hedonistic individualistic society is not one without
religion. I call it neo-pagan precisely because it does have a
religion, a religion based upon the idolization of "personal
fulfillment," particularly in matters involving sexual expression
and psychological self-satisfaction. Thus the religion of a
hedonistic individualistic society is designed to be therapeutic
for the individual, not to raise people toward higher goals;
neglectful or opposed to norms of community, responsibility,
obligation, and sacrifice upon which good societies rest.
Others have commented on how American society has become the
therapeutic society par excellence and how in keeping with
paganism the expressions of sexuality have come to be at the
center of human self-fulfillment. Moreover, whereas in paganism
sexuality is connected with fertility, in neo-paganism fertility
is not desirable and sexuality is divorced from it.
Historically American society has always been engaged in a
struggle between those who saw Americans committed toward
building a holy or good commonwealth, "a city upon a hill" in the
words of John Winthrop and the Bible, and those who saw Americans
committed to removing the shackles of civilization and restoring
natural existence. This struggle between what John Winthrop and
others referred to as "federal liberty" or the liberty to live
according to God's covenant and "natural liberty" or anarchy.
Until our times, however, the pursuit of natural liberty was
restrained by religion, both traditional and civil. Thus we are
the first generation to be confronted with the full impact of the
revolution.
There are already signs that the revolution may have run its
course. Just as the original "natural men" who were the first to
reach the American West were ultimately restrained by a harsh
environment, so too may environmental factors place real limits
on the neo-pagan expression of natural liberty in our times,
whether it is a restriction of drug use through death from
overdosing or the restriction on sexual promiscuity as a result
of AIDS. But for the moment hedonistic individualism seems to be
alive and well.
It need hardly be said that there is no honest way to reconcile
hedonistic individualism and Judaism. One cannot be
authentically Jewish and pursue that neo-pagan course. Not that
being Jewish is not pleasurable, but it is a pleasure based upon
assuming responsibility whether one likes it or not, which places
concerns other than immediate personal gratification at the top
of one's list of priorities.
It is our argument that in the end the search for immediate
gratification is doomed to fail as people go from thrill to
thrill in a vain attempt to satisfy appetites that are by their
very nature insatiable. That is, in the end, self-destructive,
while true personal satisfaction comes from commitment to
something larger than oneself, even at the price of
self-restraint. But Jewish institutions, including federations,
have a fight on their hands to compete to survive in a world of
hedonistic individualism and Jewish morality must struggle with
neo-paganism.
The Jewish community may also be undergoing a shift in its
resource base. Earlier discussions that suggested that older
sources of money in the Jewish community may not be available
after the postwar entrepreneurial generation that accumulated
them passes on, turned out to be quite wide of the mark since it
seems that new generations of entrepreneurs are emerging all the
time. Hence it may be necessary to reach out to people who have
made their money in new fields of endeavor, but the basic
approach will be generally the same.
The one exception will be that today more people want "hands on"
involvement when they give money as well as when they are active
themselves. Thus the whole idea of federated giving whereby
people pool their resources and let others decide how they should
be allocated is under some challenge. Federations will have to
rethink how they can accommodate the desire for hands-on
involvement with the important principles of federated giving
and, even when hands-on involvement is recognized, to prevent the
skewing of giving in the direction of passing fancies or
enthusiasms.
On the other hand, for the first time in the history of the
American Jewish community, federations are acquiring funds which
do not need to be raised every year and which can be used at the
discretion of the federation leadership. These are derived from
the endowment funds which the federations are now accumulating.
In some cases the annual income from these funds is significant
enough to give the federation leadership a certain leverage that
can be used independently of their givers' attitudes. There may
even come a time when some federations gain more income from
their trust funds than from contributions. This has happened in
other communities in the past. There are both pluses and minuses
in this situation. As endowment funds grow there will be issues
to be faced in terms of the use of their proceeds relating to
this issue.
We are also witnessing the emergence of large Jewish foundations
with assets in the tens of millions of dollars. These are not
the family funds of yesteryear which were essentially vehicles
for passing through the contributions of the wealthy for
charitable purposes, perhaps with small permanent set-asides.
These are powerful new instruments for good or ill in the Jewish
community that are already able to grant millions of dollars
every year for Jewish purposes. These foundations have far more
"free" money, that is to say, funds not previously committed to
the ongoing support of specific agencies or programs, than any
other Jewish community instrumentality.
The question is, will they be used wisely or according to the
whims of their founders. To what extent will they compete with
the federations in setting communal priorities or in other ways?
We already have one clearcut example. The Wexner Leadership
Foundation already may be spending more on leadership development
than any other body in the organized American Jewish community
and aims to spend more than all of them combined. It moved into
this field at the initiative of Leslie Wexner and Herbert
Friedman (the original initiator of the UJA leadership
development program). Wexner endowed the foundation without any
prior consultation with the Jewish communal establishment. The
Wexner Leadership Foundation appears to be working with local
federations in what it is doing, but that is by its choice.
One might respond that federated giving never was the sum total
of Jewish communal giving, that there always were individuals
pursuing their own priorities, that, for example, at one time
Jewish hospitals had a much higher place on the list of communal
priorities because individual Jews wanted to support them. But
we were never talking of sums of this magnitude invested in
permanent funds which will take on a life of their own.
These new foundations also have worldwide agendas and reflect the
end of the isolation of North American Jewry. Moreover, as with
other Jewish fundraising efforts they will find Israel very
attractive. In this they are joined by new instrumentalities
such as the New Israel Fund. In at least one case, one of the
major new foundations has tied itself in with the New Israel Fund
with regard to Israel projects. The New Israel Fund presents
itself as offering more opportunities for targeting gifts and
for "hands on" involvement in Israel. Since Israel is blessed or
cursed with being the focal point for every Jew's vision of what
he or she wants the world to be like and every Jew wants to
rebuild Israel according to his or her vision, this is a serious
change which the federations will have to confront.
Responding to Shifting Bases of Energy in the Jewish World
Finally, there are shifting bases of energy in the Jewish world.
In the first postwar generation the two great sources of energy
in the Jewish world were Israel's Labor camp, centered in the
Labor Party and the kibbutzim, the establishment that dominated
the Israeli polity, economy and society, and the American Jewish
establishment, particularly as reflected in the federation
movement and the non-Orthodox religious movements. Today, while
those energy sources continue to function, at best they have
become routinized and they may even be declining.
For a brief moment, at the end of the 1960s, a new source of
energy appeared in the form of young Jewish radicals seeking to
rejudaize the American Jewish community in contemporary ways.
They made a significant contribution to energizing North American
Jewish life in new ways. Within a decade they had spent
themselves as a force and/or had become institutionalized.
For now, the only new source of energy seems to be in Orthodoxy
and in ultra-Orthodoxy at that. While still a very small
minority of the Jewish people, they represent the new institution
builders and agenda setters, even if the agendas they set simply
pose challenges to be attacked by others. This is true whether
we are speaking of Gush Emunim, Habad, the yeshiva world, or
Shas. It is reflected worldwide in the demographic situation.
Among diaspora Jews the average number of children per family is
approximately 1.7 or less than replacement rate. Among
non-Orthodox Jews in Israel it stands at approximately 2.2, or
just above replacement rate. On the other hand, modern Orthodox
Jewish families in Israel have between 3-5 children and those in
the diaspora slightly less, while ultra-Orthodox Jewish families
the world over have between 8 and 10 children. From time
immemorial, having children has been a good measure of a
society's morale and expectations for the future, with fewer
reflecting pessimism, malaise and social decay.
In the United States, for example, the surveys show that no more
than 10 percent of American Jews define themselves as Orthodox, a
figure that has stayed more or less constant for several decades.
That is misleading since at one time most of those who defined
themselves as Orthodox did so residually, that is to say, they
were not Orthodox in observance but retained their affiliation
with Orthodoxy out of nostalgia or fileopiety, while in their
personal lives they were no different than the Jews who had
joined non-Orthodox religious movements. Today, virtually all of
those who define themselves as Orthodox are serious about it, are
Orthodox in belief, observance and practice. Thus the number of
authentically Orthodox has at least doubled, if not tripled, even
if the overall percentage of Orthodox in the total Jewish
community has not changed.
Moreover, in the last decade many Orthodox Jews have found that
they can benefit from being involved in the larger Jewish
community, thus ending an earlier pattern of Orthodox
isolationism. Elsewhere I have noted how an alliance seems to be
emerging between Orthodox Jewry and the federation movement in
the United States, similar to the historic alliance between the
Labor camp and the Religious Zionist parties in Israel, for
reasons of mutual benefit. I have also calculated that, while
Orthodox Jews remain only 10 percent of the total Jewish
population, they now constitute about 30 percent of Jewish
activists. This is because so many non-Orthodox Jews are simply
not involved with Jewish life at all. This gives Orthodox Jewry
an influence far beyond the raw percentages and the 30 percent
seems to be climbing.
Institutionally the results of this are most visible in Jewish
education. With the decline in Jewish birthrate, the changed
situation in American society whereby public schools are ceasing
to be considered a viable educational option for upper middle
class families, a category that includes the vast majority of
Jews, and the concomitant failure of supplementary Jewish
education, enrollment in Jewish day schools has increased
dramatically. Today, 25 percent of those who receive a Jewish
education attend day school and most of those day schools were
founded and are maintained under Orthodox auspices and teach
Orthodox ideology and practice. While the Conservative and, more
recently, Reform movements have made substantial strides in
providing day school education, they still represent minor
trends. Moreover, ultra-Orthodoxy is particularly strong in the
day school movement. It can well be said that the Orthodox have
a predominant position in serious Jewish education today. This
is even more true in Canada where nominal Orthodoxy remains a
real factor and the Conservative and Reform movements are
considerably weaker than they are in the United States.
A second area where Orthodox energy is being felt is in Jewish
communal service itself. Whereas as recently as a decade ago
observant Jews were rarely found within the Jewish communal
service, today they are a major, if not the major, source of
recruitment. They bring with them a new spirit of Jewishness and
a more comprehensive definition of what it means to be Jewish
than in the past. At present, with some very important
exceptions, most are still in junior and middle level positions
in organized Jewish life, but the direction of the trend is
clear. Whether or not other movements and ideologies can provide
the same energizing sources is not at all clear at this moment.
The Coming of Age of American Jewry?
Does this mean a coming of age of American Jewry? In some
respects American Jewry, like the United States itself, is
constantly "coming of age." "Coming of age" is such a very
familiar theme in American life and thought that each generation
seems to repeat it. On the other hand, there is a qualitative
difference in American Jewish life today. At the beginning of
the first postwar generation, Jewish students were not certain
that they could hope to break down the enrollment barriers raised
by anti-Semitism in the "best" universities. By the end of the
generation, the first Jews were being appointed university
presidents. This year a Jew was chosen to be president of
Princeton, widely known as the school that most excluded Jews
until relatively late.
To take a different kind of example, since the 1973 oil crisis
American Jews have anticipated onslaughts of anti-Semitism each
time there has been some unpleasant event in which Israel or Jews
were implicated. Each time Jewish expectations were wrong.
Anti-Semitism continues to exist but it is definitely a
peripheral phenomenon.
In matters of Jewish identity there is also a certain coming of
age, in a sense that there is now a clearly American Jewish
identity. Jonathan Woocher has described the components of that
identity in his book, Sacred Survival, prepared under the
auspices of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs as part of
the Center's study of the civil religion of contemporary Jewry.
All of the surveys show similar results.
There is a body of Jewish ritual observance, public and private,
that has become expected of American Jews, a body consisting of
those observances most in harmony with a rather secularized
American ideology. Thus the Pesach Seder has become the most
widely observed ritual because it celebrates freedom. Indeed,
its attainment of this position is a direct product of the 1960s
when those radicals who identified as Jews sought a Jewish means
to express their radical commitment to freedom and found it in
the Seder. Hannukah remains the next most widely observed ritual
for reasons with which we have long been familiar, namely it
offers a practical Jewish parallel to Christmas and once again
celebrates an event that requires a minimum amount of religious
commitment. High Holy Day observances, now down to third place,
are more problematic because they require long hours in the
synagogue where many people who no longer believe in the
spiritual message of the High Holy Days and do not know
sufficient Hebrew to participate in the prayers or even if they
do are not moved by them, are required to spend many hours in
what is essentially a boring activity in their eyes.
Since the 1950s and, most particularly since the late 1960s,
certain observances, such as Kashrut and Shabbat rituals have
become the norm at public functions. There is now a sense of
public respect for Jewish tradition even where private observance
is lacking.
Overall, ritual observances that are more in the way of
"happenings" are observed more widely than those that require the
maintenance of a routine such as lighting Sabbath candles.
Observances that offer positive pleasures, such as the building
of a Sukkah, are far more acceptable than those that require
self-denial, such as the the maintenance of Kashrut. Again this
fits well into the spirit of contemporary American society.
Finally, rituals that involve the children and are even focused
on them are far more widely observed than those primarily
adult-oriented and require belief and commitment to be
meaningful.
If I have overdrawn this picture somewhat it is only because I
want to suggest that this is the common denominator. Perhaps a
quarter of American Jews take traditional religious observance
seriously in some serious way (they are probably divided 10
percent Orthodox, 10 percent Conservative and 5 percent Reform).
For the rest, Judaism is a combination of contemporary American
religiousity, that is to say, religion compatible with hedonistic
individualism, one that is cheerful, makes minimum demands,
emphasizes personal fulfillment and is in harmony with the
therapeutic society; contemporary Jewish civil religion with its
emphasis on Israel and Jewish community; and the celebration of
Jewish ethnicity. It remains to be seen whether this is a
self-sustaining Judaism or not. It certainly does not work to
prevent intermarriage, perhaps because, in the American spirit,
religious matters are deemed to be exclusively the province of
the individual and no individual has the right to make demands of
conscience on any other person.
American Jewry has come of age in a different way in the realm of
Jewish culture. At least for Jews who care, there is now an
authentic American Jewish culture expressed in devices as widely
different as the Jewish Catalog, Jewish studies programs in the
universities, scholar-in-residence programs from coast to coast,
Hebrew-oriented Jewish summer camps, and contemporary
American-Jewish literature. This is not the place to describe
this American Jewish culture in detail. What is important for
our purposes is that while it originated outside of communal
leadership circles, the new generation of communal leaders are
drawn from among those who have gone through the socialization
processes of this cultural experience and who must do so to be
accepted.
This new American Jewish culture has some very strong points and
includes some of the very best Judaica scholars in the world. It
has some authentic points in that it is a meaningful synthesis of
the American and Jewish experiences. It has its share of kitsch
and it has a certain amount of inauthenticity and superficiality
which may also be characteristic of the environment in which it
has developed. It is real, however, although by the very nature
of that environment, only partial in its reach and influence.
Despite the argument of the revisionist demographers that
propinquity provides communal cohesion and it is enough to
preserve Jewishness that there are so many Jewish lawyers who
work together and Jews in Hollywood who work together, we can see
that propinquity is not enough, that one must live within some
kind of Jewish cultural framework and according to some kind of
Jewish rhythm for one's Jewishness to be meaningful. For
American Jews this still means what Mordechai M. Kaplan
enunciated so well two generations ago as living in two
civilizations. Unfortunately many of the leading American Jewish
intellectuals today, recognizing that most American Jews do not
have the foggiest notion of what it means to live in a Jewish
civilization, are trying to build a theory which suggests that it
is not necessary, that one civilization with a few Jewish
overtones is enough. That was the basis of Jacob Neusner's
praise of American Jewish life and his attack on Israel in his
notorious article of last March in the Washington Post.
In my opinion they are simply wrong. Jews are Jews only insofar
as they are part of Jewish civilization. No civilization exists
without a rhythm of its own. The secret of Jewish survival lies
in the fact that until our own century all or the vast majority
of Jews lived according to a Jewish rhythm, either because they
lived in their own land (in ancient times) or because they lived
within the rhythm of Jewish tradition as defined by halakhah in
their own communities in exile.
The success of the American Jewish experiment and indeed the
experiment of living under conditions of freedom anywhere outside
of Israel is contingent upon being able to develop and maintain
an appropriate Jewish rhythm for the vast majority of identifying
Jews in the diaspora communities. For some, a significant
minority but still a minority, traditional Judaism in one form or
another provides that rhythm. For others Zionism once provided
that rhythm. Indeed the Zionist movement consciously and
deliberately set out to do so, creating a Zionist calendar
embracing but also parallel to the traditional Jewish calendar.
But Zionism no longer can do so and in the USA, never could.
In North America the federation movement has developed its own
calendar that reflects a civil Jewish rhythm suitable to the new
Jewish civil religion. Thus those active in the federation
movement know that the year begins with the CJF quarterlies in
September, just prior to Rosh Hashanah; proceeds through the UJA
missions to Israel in October; the GA in November; the annual
meetings of the UJA, UIA, etc. early in December; the winter
board institutes meetings of senior professional staff, and
kick-off of the campaign in January, where the calendar also
takes on a geographic dimension in that the meetings are held
somewhere in the sunbelt, usually in Florida; the beginning of
the campaign in February continuing through May; the quarterlies
in April geographically tied to Washington, D.C.; the campaign
wrap-up in May and clean-up in June, leading into the Jewish
Agency Assembly. For many years summer was dead time, but now it
is being absorbed into the rhythm as well with meetings such as
the Brandeis Leadership Institute or (perhaps) the Hollander
Colloquium. Moreover, the end of August is now being added to
the rhythm with the Presidents' Mission as a pre-campaign
kick-off.
Within this overall rhythm there are many more specialized events
which add to the Jewish connection. All told, this is a practical
way of providing a Jewish rhythm for some of the most committed
and involved American Jews. Moreover it is an authentic creation
of the federation movement and its counterparts in what I have
described as the keter malkhut, the domain of civil governance of
the Jewish people. In this respect it is a rhythm parallel to
the traditional religious rhythm developed by the keter torah,
the domain of Torah, which in the years of exile and dispersion
provided the rhythm for civil events as well (i.e., communal
elections were always held during hol hamoed Pesach). But it is
a public rhythm only and does not really include home and family.
Hence its impact is limited to a relatively small leadership
group.
Implications for the Federation Movement:
Problems of Changing
the Traditional Focii
It is not my responsibility to deal extensively with the
implications of all this for federations, but I do want to raise
a few critical issues. First of all, the shift of Jewish
population to the South and West and to smaller communities on
the rurban-cybernetic frontier means that there are new issues of
fundraising, membership and provision of services that must be
confronted. In order to cope with these problems it is necessary
to go beyond the local federation the way most are presently
constituted, that is to say, centered in a major central city
and reaching into those suburbs which represent extensions of the
city. It is necessary to begin to consider certain countrywide
or even continent-wide services.
For example, the Council of Jewish Federations should consider
establishing a permanent population study center to study the
demographics of the Jews of the United States. Canada is
fortunate in having a national census that asks questions that
identify Jews by religion and ethnicity. In the United States,
while the larger federations can conduct demographic studies, the
smaller ones and the newer ones rarely do and it is in precisely
those areas that the number of unaffiliated Jews is growing. It
may be that only CJF can fill this gap or at least it should play
a role in arranging for doing so in cooperation with local
federations.
Flowing from that, CJF must engage in long-range strategic
planning to keep on top of the trends as they develop and to
suggest ways for those trends to be assimilated into the ongoing
work of the federations. In this respect, CJF can serve the
entire continent since many Canadian Jews migrate to the United
States, especially to the sunbelt, in the course of their lives.
The federation movement will have to recognize the states as
relevant entities, not only to lobby in state capitals for
government support or to advance programs of federation interest
but in terms of organizing. Traditionally the states have served
as the basis for similar kinds of non-Jewish organizations -
religious, educational, labor and business. The Jews rarely if
ever organized that way because they were concentrated in the big
cities. Now there are services which can only be provided on a
statewide basis, for example, services to Jewish university
students. In many states the state university is not located in
the city with the major concentration of Jews. Yet that city may
contribute the vast majority of Jewish students at the state
university. Community relations efforts of all kinds may be best
broadened to a statewide basis. Certainly smaller Jewish
communities outside of the major metropolitan areas should not be
left to their own resources any more than weaker Jewish
populations within the metropolitan areas are.
In some parts of the country, New Jersey for example, most
federations are already organized on a regional rather than a
metropolitan basis. This is also true of outstate Illinois,
albeit in a far more limited way because the number of Jews and
the amount of Jewish resources are limited. The Jewish
federations of Delaware and Rhode Island are examples of
statewide federations that developed in small states with
relatively small Jewish populations within easy driving distance
of the principal city, but including the state's "independent"
communities as well.
Regionalization within local federations also may become
important as they expand to encompass ever more spreading Jewish
populations. The Los Angeles Federation is a case in point.
Covering virtually all of Los Angeles County, an area of over
4,000 square miles (almost the entire area of Connecticut), for a
long time its real activity was confined to the central core of
West Los Angeles/Beverly Hills/Westwood. By creating a regional
structure it has generated greater involvement, a higher level of
services and better fundraising throughout the country.
An alternative to regionalization are regional or statewide
confederations of federations. The federations in the San
Francisco Bay Area are at least talking about confederation for
certain purposes. There is every reason to believe that the
federations of New Jersey should move in that direction.
Undoubtedly there are other states where this would be useful as
well. One caveat, there must be some symmetry in size -
confederations do not work where elephants are confederated with
mice. The mice properly remain afraid that the elephant may sit
down somewhere without looking first. But with that caveat there
are possibilities of this kind to be pursued.
In many cases, it will be sufficient to develop networking among
federations, either to deal with some of the examples dealt with
above or with more difficult problems. For example, in our
mobile society many people divide their time between more than
one community when they have the economic means to do so. Until
recently, only retired people fell into that category, living
half the year in their communities in the Rust Belt and the other
half in the Sun Belt. One of the characteristics of the
rurban-cybernetic frontier is that more people will be able to do
so since it will be possible to manage one's enterprises from
different locations. This poses serious problems for two
reasons. One, by dividing their time, individuals no longer can
be truly active in either community. Two, the question arises as
to which community should receive their contribution. Since this
is usually a substantial contribution, the problem is not merely
an academic one.
If, as promised, the rurban-cybernetic frontier makes living in
more than one community a common phenomenon even for people who
are in their most active and productive ages, the implications
for the Jewish community are serious. Where do they become
involved? Can they become involved at all? Does their gift
continue to go to any local community? If so, how is it
apportioned? It may be that a series of reciprocal agreements
among the different federations can solve this problem, but maybe
the CJF should develop a standard agreement, even a countrywide
pact, for all federations to accept, which CJF would then be
responsible for overseeing.
These kinds of contracts could be used in other areas as well.
Contracting for services has become a major device in the
administration of local government in the United States and
elsewhere. There is no reason why it cannot be applied to the
federation world as well. Rather than seeking more elaborate
structures, it may be sufficient, for example, if the federations
in a particular state would contract with the federation in whose
city the major state university was located to provide services
to local students with appropriate compensation from each
federation, perhaps on a per capita basis. Such contracts would
make it possible for the local federation to take on the
requisite personnel or oversee the local Hillel foundation in
carrying out these responsibilities. Or federations in the
colder parts of the country could contract with federations in
retirement areas with regard to providing elderly care services
for former residents. Another way to deal with that would be to
create a fund at CJF to which every federation would contribute
and which would be used to cover at least some of the costs for
care for the elderly. In sum, technically there are many
possibilities for sharing the service delivery burden more
fairly.
Part of the response to this decentralization of population will
be that CJF and the other countrywide organizations will have to
strengthen their services to smaller Jewish communities and give
them a greater role on the national scene so that they will cease
to be isolated as they have been in the past and be able to
benefit from being part of a larger community.
Finally, the federation movement will have to continue to concern
itself with issues of Jewish unity and diversity in relation to
Israel and in relation to the various movements in Jewish life.
As the framing institutions of the North American Jewish
community, they will be the ones who speak most directly to the
Israeli government, principally through the Jewish Agency, and
the ones for whom unity has the greatest immediate operational
meaning. As framing institutions they will increasingly become
arenas for working out the problems of Jewish unity and
diversity, hopefully as forums rather than as locii of raw
conflict. But one way or another they will be the arenas. That
is a large task but it is a great one. It should be pursued
intelligently.
Up to now, continent wide, the federation movement has tended to
function in the natural Jewish way, that is to say, to rely upon
mavenology to deal with changing circumstances because all Jews
see themselves as mavens. The more progressive local federations
have long since given up on mavenology in such matters to pursue
long-range planning. Both the opportunity and the time have come
for CJF to take the lead in doing the same for North American
Jewry as a whole.
