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

There is a specter hovering over mainstream American Jewish groups. It's called "Jewish continuity," an overheated reaction referring to the dread that the number of American Jews may sharply decline in the next century. Yet if true, and only if true, it is a predicament born of living in an open society which fosters freedom of choice. Public anti-Semitism is by and large a thing of the past. Indeed, never before have so many Jews been so secure, accepted, and successful. The United States -- and certainly not Israel -- has become our goldene medina, our golden, promised land.

Then why so much anxiety about whether Jewish women and men can be moved enough to remain Jewish, and agree to marry other Jews, and pass on the faith to their children and they to theirs? Is it possible that Israel and the collective memorialization of the Holocaust can no longer hold us together? That more positive, more Judaic values are required?

These two contentious and tendentious books by writers not known to be diffident about speaking their minds might never have appeared had not the National Jewish Population Study announced in 1990 that between 1985-1990, 52 percent of Jews were intermarried (though the actual figure may be six to 12 percentage points less). This "more than half" figure was a bombshell, especially since as late as the mid-'60s the rate was less than 10 percent. If so many Jews were marrying out, and their children only half-Jews, the reasoning went, might not the bulk of non-Orthodox Jews gradually fade away and "assimilate," abandoning a priceless 5,000-year-old heritage to a provincial and sectarian Orthodox remnant? Was a "demographic disaster" (as Elliot Abrams puts it) really awaiting us? Are we (as Dershowitz's title says) "vanishing"?

Still, skeptics abound. American Jews have neither converted in any significant number nor assimilated. Historian Gerald Sorin, in his new book Tradition Transformed: The Jewish Experience in America, makes an excellent case that we have instead acculturated. Assimilation, Sorin reminds us, means essentially the extinction of ethnic or religious singularity, whereas the bulk of American Jews have and may continue to undergo acculturation: "accommodation to the larger society without total loss of traditional cultural traits." Here in the U.S. they built "a religiously authenticated Jewish American ethnic identity around philanthropy, Israelism, political liberalism and the search for social justice as well as around anti-anti-Semitism."

In their new books, the conservative Elliott Abrams, once a key player in the Reagan administration's Central American policy and now head of an ethics think tank, and Alan Dershowitz, the liberal appellate lawyer of Claus von Bulow and O.J. Simpson fame, both accept the Chicken Little hypothesis while offering quite different solutions. In fact, their books are so provocative -- and illuminating -- that they are sure to touch off a good deal of furious debate.

Abrams, a self-described religiously "somewhat observant Conservative Jew," offers his vision of what American Jewish life could be if only Jews turn their backs on liberal causes. How so? By warming to the ardently pro-Israel Christian Right, and abandoning many of its old allies in separation of church and state and school prayer issues. Above all, the "American Jewish community must conceive of itself as a religious community" or else begin to "decline" since "continuity programs cannot work unless they are centered on faith in God," warns Abrams.

To Abrams and his fellow neo-conservatives, liberalism is now spent, having long since run out of ideas. He would probably feel much better if his fellow Jews voted their economic and political interest and engaged and enlightened the Christian Right, which, once it understands our concerns, can be allies. But even more to the point, as conservatives never fail to remind us, the Christian Right is a crucial and undeviating friend of Israel.

The fact is, however, that the overwhelming number of American Jews are dedicated to pluralism and tolerance and keeping government's hand far from religion. They would reject Abrams's views, preferring instead to view the Christian Right as the Anti-Defamation League did in 1994 when it published its critical "The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance & Pluralism in America."

Soon after, Abrams and 74 fellow travelers condemned the ADL in a New York Times ad, complaining: "It ill behooves an organization dedicated to fighting against defamation to engage in defamation of its own." So, it's hardly an eye-opener when Abrams informs readers that "American Jews believe simply as an article of faith that a more religious society threatens them -- and this had been a much more powerful credo for the American Jew than any of the laws of Moses." Or that: "All too many Jewish groups act not as Jewish entities but rather as liberal political bodies, taking on the evangelicals on such matters as gun control or gay rights." And given their "shrinking" numbers, Abrams advises: Jews should "work closely with Christian groups whose size and influence are growing, and which are strongly pro-Israel." On other issues, "clarify for them the worries and concerns of Jews." Should this unlikely entente come to pass, let us pray that some basic biblical precepts such as "Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself" and "Do Unto Others as You Would Have Others Do Unto You" will be conveyed to them as well.

Dershowitz, reared and educated as Orthodox, is now a secular Jew but just as concerned about keeping the faith. His interest, however, lies in creating an eclectic Judaism open to all who wish to enter. What is needed, he insists, is intensive, positive, quality schooling about Jewish history, literature, culture, and religion that also respects and welcomes a secular, humanistic Judaism; however, he never convincingly gives an answer to the question Abrams and others have asked: how an approach which draws in those who do not believe in the divine interpretation of the torah or in some spiritual aspect will preserve Judaism in future generations.

Even so, he is far more realistic than Abrams, especially in reflecting the lives of Jews in so diverse a religion and society. "The Judaism I am trying to defend and enhance is a Judaism of ideas, of attitudes, of skepticism, of justice, of compassion, of argumentation and of inclusiveness." To him, that means among other things accepting any non-Jewish wife or husband "who wants to be part of our heritage" and acknowledging the legitimacy of cultural and secular Judaism. "That kind of Judaism does not depend on numbers, or on religious definitions of who is a Jew. ...That kind of Judaism depends on the power of Jewish ideas to educate, influence, and repair the world" -- the mainspring of Jewish attachment to liberalism. Dershowitz's liberalism also recognizes the elementary truth that Jews are not and have never been monolithic. We are everything from anarchists to Zionists, liberals, conservatives and radicals, neo-and paleo-conservatives, an all-inclusive tent which, I would hope, accepts that Noam Chomsky, is as much a Jew as Irving Kristol and that a female Reform rabbi is as Jewish as an ultra-Orthodox rabbi.

Whatever the future holds, there is much in Judaism and Jewish life which conforms to the best this country and its ideals offer, and whose spiritual and moral values are not only appealing but worth preserving. In the wise words of my late friend Henry Schwarzschild: "Jews are defined by neither doctrine nor credo. We are defined by task. That task is to redeem the world through justice...Even the unbelievers among us are never so Jewish as when they reject social apathy and confront the desperate needs of their brothers and sisters...not because our well-being depends on it, but because Judaism does."

If that's "liberalism" and "social justice," it stands a far better chance of keeping Jews Jewish than does genuflecting before the Christian Right and its handful of Jewish allies.

Murray Polner is co-editor (with Adam Simms) of the independent biweekly newsletter PS. The Intelligent Guide to Jewish Affairs.