Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America.

Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America, by Elliot Abrams (Free Press, 237 pp., $25)

Why do American Jews cling so tenaciously to their negative self-image as an oppressed and despised minority?

At the moment, the presidents of Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Dartmouth all happen to be members of this group of purportedly reviled "outsiders." The three leading Cabinet officers (at State, Treasury, and Defense) boast Jewish ancestry (even though William Cohen is only half Jewish), and in the last two years the secretaries of Commerce, Labor, and Agriculture have also been Jews, as have the head of the Federal Reserve system, a Director of Central Intelligence, and a Navy Chief of Staff. For years, the Supreme Court featured a single "Jewish seat," but now both Clinton appointees (Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer) are Jews. Despite the persistent Jewish assumption that American Christians harbor deep-seated anti-Semitic prejudice, voters in California and Wisconsin somehow managed to transcend such attitudes to such a degree that each of those states has elected two senators who describe themselves as Jews--as do six other members of "the world's greatest deliberative body."

Aside from such high-profile evidence of acceptance, the over-representation of citizens of Jewish ancestry among America's doctors and lawyers, college professors and journalists, entertainment moguls, musicians, bankers, scientists, and sports agents is so blatant that neo-Nazi suspicions of a massive Elders of Zion-style cabal are, quite frankly, no more preposterous than Jewish paranoia concerning all-powerful anti-Semitic conspiracies.

In spite of the unprecedented position Jews have achieved in the United States, most of them continue to view hatred and discrimination from their Christian fellow citizens as a grim fact of contemporary life. One typical survey by the American Jewish Committee showed that by a jaw-dropping margin of 76 to 14, they believed that anti-Semitism is still "a serious problem for American Jews." An astounding 57 per cent felt that they "could one day face severe anti-Semitic persecution," and 41 per cent insisted that "Jews are widely disliked by gentile Americans." One 1985 survey by the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council found that almost a third of the Jews in their region said that they did not think non-Jews would vote for a Jew for Congress. At the time they offered this opinion, all three of the elected Representatives in that area were Jewish.

Given the staggering level of prominence and prosperity American Jews have already achieved, how much more successful do fearful Jews actually believe we could be if we were liberated from the allegedly "serious problem" of hostility from our gentile neighbors?

The bizarre fears that continue to haunt the ethnic and religious group that might well be characterized as America's most privileged minority are exposed and explored in Faith or Fear, a courageous and significant new book by Elliott Abrams. Mr. Abrams, an assistant secretary of state in the Reagan Administration, has already earned eternal gratitude from lovers of freedom for the anti-Communist Central American policy he helped to devise and to guide; he now commands new admiration for his relentlessly logical approach in distinguishing between the groundless fears of the Jewish establishment and the one great, authentic threat that American Jews seem incapable of confronting--the very real possibility of demographic self-destruction.

Mr. Abrams quotes Irving Kristol's insightful declaration that "the danger facing American Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them but that Christians want to marry them." Indeed, current statistics on intermarriage suggest the rapid disappearance of the Jewish community in this country. The majority of Jews who have married since 1985 have married non-Jews, while the rate of conversion of non-Jewish spouses has declined to 5 per cent. Of these intermarried couples, more than twice as many celebrate Christian holidays as celebrate Jewish holidays (54 per cent versus 20 per cent); in fact, one-third of all Americans of Jewish ancestry no longer report Judaism as their religion. Such numbers threaten far more than ancient notions of racial or religious purity; for American Jews, intermarriage and assimilation represent a menace to survival itself. While Jews once made up 3.7 per cent of the U.S. population, their current representation has fallen to 2 per cent.

In the face of this crisis, the most powerful Jewish organizations in the country act as if the greatest dangers to their membership arose from the public display of the Ten Commandments (which, ironically, their own ancestors passed on to the world), or through government cooperation of any kind with precisely those religious day schools which have proved uniquely effective in promoting Jewish continuity. In recent cases before the Supreme Court, the Jewish establishment has fought to protect our nation from the unspeakable danger of a Rhode Island rabbi reading a prayer at a school graduation, and has struggled against a sect of Hasidim who had secured help from the State of New York for the education of their physically and emotionally disabled children. As Abrams pointedly observes: "The elements of the Jewish community having the greatest difficulty keeping their children Jewish used the courts to attack the practice by which the elements having the greatest success keeping their children Jewish were doing so."

Behind this insanity on the part of the Jewish establishment stands an almost pathological terror of any revival of traditional religious life, either Christian or Jewish. As Mr. Abrams writes of today's Jewish leaders:

   Their position presently stands revealed not merely as fear of government
   support for religion but fear of religion itself ... American Jews believe
   simply as an article of faith that a more religious society threatens
   them--and this has been a much more powerful credo for the American Jew
   than any of the laws of Moses. Their adherence to secularism does not
   result from any survey research, sociological analysis, or political
   science, much less from their religion. It does not emerge from any
   insights into modern Christianity or for that matter modern American life.
   It is founded in fear, and though that fear can easily be explained by
   Jewish history, it cannot be defended by reference to Jewish interests
   today. It freezes American Jews into a pattern of thought and behavior that
   is unfair to their neighbors and damaging to their own future.

In order to secure that future, Abrams makes a powerful and utterly persuasive case for an urgent reappraisal of Jewish attitudes toward religious Christians. "Christians whose faithfulness to their religion, and ability to keep their children faithful to it, should be a model for Jews, are instead seen as bumpkins and bigots." Elsewhere, he is unsparing in his denunciation of Jewish hostility to Christian evangelicals in particular, highlighting the passionate evangelical support for Israel and the lack of any indication whatever of prevalent Jew-hatred in that community:

   Jews who believe that evangelical Christians are likely to be anti-Semites,
   and that Christian religiosity is associated with anti-Semitism, are
   indulging in prejudice in the dictionary definition of the term. They are
   prejudging their fellow citizens and condemning them for bigotry without
   evidence and without trial ... Anti-Christian bias is apparently the only
   form of prejudice that remains respectable in the American Jewish
   community.

In one of his book's most striking insights, Abrams concludes: "Today, in a moment of historic reversal, Christians are becoming more respectful of Judaism than are Jews of Christianity." In short, the so-called Christian Right inspires terror in much of the Jewish community not because it represents a threat to Judaism, but because it represents a threat to secularism--which has become a surrogate faith for too many American Jews.

In two compelling chapters, Mr. Abrams examines the profound changes in all major Christian denominations regarding their attitude toward Jews as reflected in official pronouncements and even Sunday-school texts. Here, he emphasizes the unmistakably heroic role of Pope John Paul II in repairing two thousand years of Catholic-Jewish bitterness. At the same time, he suggests that the evangelical denominations should do a better job of catching up to their Catholic and mainline Protestant brethren in presenting Judaism in a more sympathetic light in educational materials.

Abrams remains far more concerned, however, with the failures of Jewish education than with any shortcomings in Christian schooling. He is devastatingly effective in rebutting the trendy notion that huge new Holocaust museums and memorial programs concerning the six million martyrs can somehow produce stronger identification and commitment among American Jews.

   A Jewish community organized around Jewish victimization, suffering,
   tragedy, and death is unlikely to attract the passion of new generations.
   It is a fact that the Holocaust "revival" has not slowed the
   assimilationist trends American Jews are decrying; that is, study of the
   Holocaust has spread precisely during the years when intermarriage has as
   well, and ritual observance and synagogue affiliation have declined. If
   increased knowledge and feeling about the Holocaust are having an influence
   on the vigor of Jewish identity find solidarity, it is very hard to see.

He is equally dismissive of notions, advanced by Alan Dershowitz, Michael Lerner, and countless others, that some sense of nebulously defined "Jewishness," when yoked to liberal activism, can substitute for religious commitment. A 1988 survey for the Los Angeles Times demonstrated the destructive sway of such ideas. When asked, "What do you consider most important to your Jewish identity?" only 17 per cent of respondents said, "Religious observance," while 59 per cent answered, "A commitment to social justice." Attitudes of this sort take no note that such a commitment does nothing whatever to establish or sustain a distinctive Jewish identity. According to the leftist lights of most American Jews, Ralph Nader should be acclaimed for his characteristically Jewish "commitment to social justice" and "righteous" politics, although Mr. Nader happens to be an Arab-American.

Again and again, Mr. Abrams returns to his inescapable conclusion: "In the end, as always in Jewish history, substitutes for Judaism are false idols and following them is a path to ruin.... American Jewry will survive as a religious community or not at all."

No one has made this essential point more irresistibly than Elliott Abrams, and yet his invaluable book occasionally seems to view Jewish faith and Torah observance as merely a communal rescue strategy rather than the key to personal fulfillment. If the main argument for choosing religious commitment is its indispensable role in Jewish survival, then we will be able to press that logic only with those who already care enough about that survival to be willing to consider major changes in their lives. The real necessity for contemporary Jewish leadership is to turn the soggy logic of President Kennedy's famous aphorism on its head: to ask not what you can do for Jewish continuity, but what Jewish continuity can do for you.

The answer to that question should claim the attention of all American Jews, who suffer the same heartbreak and insecurity as their neighbors--facing shattered marriages, rude and self-destructive children, unbearably stressful two-career lives, the terrors of aging, and an underlying sense of disconnection and insignificance. Jewish observance cannot automatically solve any of these problems, but it can surely help with all of them. Mr. Abrams makes the idealistic case for Judaism--urging religious, commitment as necessary for communal survival--but the selfish case, stressing benefits for individuals and families, is even more persuasive.

Abrams may well be in the process of discovering those benefits himself. In his preface, he explains, "I can probably best be described as a somewhat observant Conservative Jew," and as such he undoubtedly cherishes the crucial Jewish custom of Sabbath and Festival meals with family and friends. At such moments, with candles glowing over white tablecloths, lovingly prepared foods, blessed silence from televisions and telephones, joyous song, and the companionship of those in life who matter most, I doubt if Mr. Abrams's sense of satisfaction has much to do with the conviction that his home celebrations may effectively address the perilous demographic problems of the Jewish community. For most religious Jews, our pattern of observance represents God's gift to us, more than our tribute to him. Nevertheless, Elliott Abrams is entitled to feel proud that his personal commitments, as well as his penetrating and important book, make their own contribution to the ongoing struggle for Jewish survival.

Mr. Medved is a radio talk-show host in Seattle and chief film critic for the New York Post.