TOP STORY: JUDAISM: Jewish outreach joins the Exodus as a Passover topic this year

c. 1996 Religion News Service (RNS)-This Passover, Susan V. Gelmis-the daughter of a Catholic father and a Jewish mother who raised her as a Christian-will again host a Seder at her home in Berkeley, Calif. As always, she will make it a point to invite Jewish friends who have little connection to their religious roots. […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(RNS)-This Passover, Susan V. Gelmis-the daughter of a Catholic father and a Jewish mother who raised her as a Christian-will again host a Seder at her home in Berkeley, Calif. As always, she will make it a point to invite Jewish friends who have little connection to their religious roots.

Her hope is that the Seder experience will spark a desire in them to move from the periphery of Jewish life to its core, a path she herself has taken in recent years.”Jewish heritage is a valuable treasure that should be made available to all,”Gelmis said.


A 34-year-old attorney, Gelmis was aided in her exploration of Jewish religious life by community-sponsored introduction-to-Judaism courses designed for Jews seeking to reconnect with the faith. She also joined a San Francisco synagogue that reaches out to gay and lesbian Jews, of which she is one.

Gelmis can be seen as a success story in the American Jewish community’s intensive effort to stem the loss of its distinct religious identity by reaching out to those previously uninvolved in Jewish life. But despite such examples, a growing number of respected Jewish leaders has begun to question whether the enormous investment in resources and energy it takes to attract so-called unaffiliated Jews is ultimately best for American Judaism’s long-term survival.

These critics maintain that long-cherished religious norms too often are ignored in the haste to draw in as many unaffiliated Jews as possible, and that, in the end, Jewish beliefs and practices will be diluted beyond recognition.”It’s a kind of getting back to basics,”said one critic, Samuel Heilman, a professor of Jewish studies and sociology at Queens College and the City University of New York.”It’s a mirror of the split among American Jews between the majority who view Judaism as a heritage and the minority who take Judaism seriously and have made it the focus of their life.” Heilman and others have directed most of their criticism at outreach programs aimed at the growing number of Jews married to non-Jews, which critics say is the clearest sign of the community’s assimilation. Trying to draw interfaith couples into Judaism’s orbit, the critics argue, constitutes a de facto acceptance of intermarriage, which is rejected by traditional Jewish law.

Many critics of outreach also note New Age and other non-Jewish influences that those newly drawn into Judaism bring with them. Some critics also reject outreach efforts to homosexuals, citing traditional Judaism’s prohibition of same-sex relations.

But regardless of their objections, the critics are united in their belief that American Judaism’s long-term survival would be better served by concentrating the community’s limited resources on its most dependable members-Jews who are already part of the faith’s mainstream.”It’s not about giving up on the periphery,”said Heilman, author of”Portrait of American Jewry: The Last Half of the 20th Century”(University of Washington Press).”But it is a question of triage. You have to make choices about how to best use your ever-diminishing resources.” Passover-the eight-day festival (seven for Reform Jews) celebrating the ancient Israelites’ exodus from slavery in Egypt-begins at sundown on April 3. For Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president-elect of the Reform movement’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the holiday adds a certain irony to the core-versus-periphery debate.

He noted that even Moses-who led the Exodus and is Judaism’s preeminent figure-was himself once”on the periphery of Jewish life”when he lived in the Pharaoh’s palace.

Yoffie, whose Reform movement pioneered liberal outreach efforts, called attempts to limit such programs”theologically offensive because every Jew, no matter how wayward they may be, is a part of the covenant. It’s not just for the most committed.”If you just pay attention to the core, you’ll have a very small, insignificant Jewish community in just a generation; one that is powerless and living a ghetto-like existence,”he said.


The issue has long simmered below the surface of the organized Jewish community’s effort to stem intermarriage, falling synagogue attendance and other signs of growing Jewish assimilation.

A 1990 survey by the Council of Jewish Federations showed that about 52 percent of American Jews are marrying non-Jews. Other surveys indicate that only about a fourth of the children born to such parents are being raised as Jews and that nearly two-thirds of the 5.8 million Jews in the United States do not belong to a synagogue.

Outreach programs have become American Judaism’s prime weapon against assimilation. The effort has become massive, although it is impossible to put a dollar amount on it because of the myriad of denominational, synagogue, national agency and local community group budgets that directly or indirectly help fund outreach attempts.

Traditional Orthodox Jews have argued all along that too many community resources are being lavished on Jews who, at best, are only marginally interested in religious Judaism.

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Now, some influential liberal Orthodox and even non-Orthodox centrist Jewish leaders have taken up the issue at community forums and in the pages of Jewish newspapers and magazines.

Writing recently in Commentary, the monthly magazine of the American Jewish Committee, Jack Wertheimer, Charles S. Liebman and Steven M. Cohen-three respected scholars of the American Jewish scene-urged the Jewish community to”redirect its sights”toward the needs of already committed Jews”whose participation it has taken for granted.”In the end, they wrote, it is these Jews who are most likely to”sustain”Jewish religious observance.


Rather than concentrating on outreach programs, the authors said Jewish resources should fund those financially strapped institutions that committed Jews depend upon. Among them are synagogues, religious day schools, Jewish summer camps and other youth programs.”It only makes sense to target our strengths,”Wertheimer, a professor of Jewish history at the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, said in an interview.”The American Jewish community is being hard hit by assimilation. Nurture a strong core group and it will attract others. … Programs that just build sheer numbers are really just about short-term success. Mindless inclusivism helps people to feel comfortable, but you have to ask what are the costs of this.” Wertheimer said he does not oppose”outreach per se.”Rather, he said, he is trying to articulate”the concerns of those who are upset that they cannot afford to send their children to (Jewish) day schools and feel their concerns are not receiving the same sympathetic hearing that those on the periphery are receiving.” (END OPTIONAL TRIM)

A survey of the Jewish community released last year by the Jewish Outreach Institute showed that just 4 percent of the Jews married to non-Jews have ever participated in an outreach program. Critics point to the survey as proof of the failure of such efforts.”I’m not interested in chasing after people who do not want to be reached,”said Steven Bayme, the American Jewish Committee’s national director of Jewish communal affairs.”We just have to accept some losses to the community.” But Egon Mayer, director of the New York-based Jewish Outreach Institute, said the survey”really proves that there’s a lot more talk about doing outreach than is actually done. What we really need is a bigger investment in outreach, not less. … You can’t write off more than half your population. Do that and it won’t be a Jewish community anymore, but a Jewish club.”This whole debate is really about money when it should be about drawing in Jews. It’s the crassest level of competition.” (STORY CAN END HERE)

To Dan Icolari, a 53-year-old Staten Island, N.Y., corporate communications consultant, all the talk about concentrating resources on the core Jewish community”sounds logical if resources are limited.”At the same time, Icolari wondered where his religious search would have ended if not for Jewish community outreach efforts.

Like Gelmis, Icolari’s father was Catholic, his mother Jewish and he has also embraced Judaism in recent years. He even organized a neighborhood”minyan,”or prayer group, for unaffiliated Jews”intimidated”by synagogues.

Despite his understanding of”the finite nature of resources,”Icolari said the debate over the core-versus-periphery leaves him angry.”It’s difficult enough to find your way back into Judaism,”he said.”If the periphery is abandoned, it will be impossible.”

MJP END RIFKIN

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