Bney Brak, a Haredi Kindergarten. Large four stage building, they want to add two floors. The neighborhood is a slum near the Industrial Area. Fat women with shiny plastic parookes, unfinished walls, dangerous badly built staircase, not very clean. Beautiful Jewish children in dirty rags walking around the playground like drugged zombies, indifferent to us. The rav (pic) very knowledgeable about building and knowing exactly what he wants from me. They want to do it at minimum expense, without a contractor, lowest quality construction possible. While I am strongly convinced that this institution is in a sacred mission for the survival of the Jewish people, they are achieving what no other nation can do (that is a growing population), one cannot but observe that from zero distance it is most depressing, smelling of raw sewage, with unkept, abulic children. People idealizes the schtetl, but it must have been a cheerless place.
24 comments:
"While I am strongly convinced that this institution is in a sacred mission for the survival of the Jewish people"
J, this is a delusion. Demographic trends are difficult to predict accurately long-term, and all manner of unforeseen events could perturb them. The survival of the Jewish people is not really at stake from purely demographic causes in the near future despite all the hyperbole floating through the blogosphere. And even if you're right, the impoverished and dirty haredi/hasidic future is sufficiently undesirable that it might be preferable to assimilate out.
Anonymous, Let me disagree. After the Holocaust and the post-Holocaust assimilation sinkhole, every Jewish child is a miracle and a treasure. Probably we have different life experiences and we are from a different generation (I am close to the Holocaust - temporarily and geographically). I understand that for young people my perspective is uncomprehensible, but that is what is. I do respect your point of view, it is much healthier than my own sick philosophy produced by a sick century.
Israel must force Haredim to modernize.
Don't forget that almost all of us "modern" Jews are only a generation or two removed from grandfathers with payas who would be more comfortable among the haredim (though modern frumkeit is in some ways a distortion of the traditional kind) than among us and our immodestly dressed daughters. In order to have a future you have to show up. The grandchildren of those unkept yeshiva buchers are the water engineers of the future..
K
"The grandchildren of those unkept yeshiva buchers are the water engineers of the future."
I doubt it, in part because of the increased severity and reactionary insularity that has been introduced into ultra-Orthodox practice since the second half of the 20th century. The expectation that most young men should accept poverty and study in kollel rather than work is one such modern phenomenon. Likewise, the minimal and second-rate instruction that ultra-Orthodox schools offer in secular subjects with nearly all class time devoted to Talmud studies. Both practices serve to isolate the younger ultra-Orthodox and limit their ability to leave the fold even if they might desire to.
Like I said, making predictions about long-term demographic trends is a fools' errand. They are subject to too many unknown and uncontrollable factors. One can't just extend the current demographic curve for secular Jews out fifty years and assume that reality will match your prediction. Moreover, the depressant effect of arbitrary religious dicta on Jewish population size, especially the Talmudic decision not to reoognize patrilineal Jews, should also be considered. Most of the world considers such people Jewish anyway. It also appears to be a reversal of ancient Jewish custom of patrilineal inheritance of tribal membership.
I am sure that future Israeli water engineers will come increasingly from the religious families. And we need them. In my mind I say that THEY are right and following the right lifestyle. I am totally unable to join them and not only because I grew up in Stalinist Hungary and secular Argentina, but because I cannot suffer ignorance, misery, superstition, dirt. It is quite a contradiction.
The decision to recognize only matrilineal descent is consequence of past uncertainty regarding paternity. Things have changed so it would be correct to revert to Biblical legislation.
On a second thought, recognizing Jewish affiliation on the basis of genetics would complicate life. Whole tribes (such as the Ethiopian Falasha) would have to be thrown out of the Jewish nation, and they are not the only ones. On the other hand, millions of Europeans, Chinese (Yes!) and Middle Eastern individuals could carry "Jewish" genes and are descendants of Jewish groups, they could claim legitimate Jewish identity while being culturally Muslim, Christian or Buddhist. The current irrational mess is more manageable, I think.
It's a dangerous gamble to expect that future engineers and scientists will come from the descendants of the current crop of haredim and hasidim. It would be rather difficult to gain admission to graduate school and handle the higher math if one were still struggling with basic algebra at age 20. Likewise, some of these people in the U.S. never master standard English (a former teacher at a Satmar school wrote a book that shows this). You have unjustifiably high expectations for people whose entire schooling is devoted to Talmud.
I proposed simply recognizing patrilineal descent, which can be proven with reliable paternity tests. That leaves the definition of Jewishness at the same level of reliance on genetics as currently.
Making genetics the sole criterion for Jewishness is difficult and somewhat arbitrary as there is no specific individual marker of Jewish ancestry (e.g. the poorly named "Cohen gene" doesn't code for proteins and is found elsewhere than in Jews). Micro-arrays covering several hundred thousand SNP's can be used to infer genetic ancestry, but the definitition of Jewish would still be arbitrary. Most of the "lost tribes" Jewish groups like the Falasha, Bene Israel (India), and Lemba don't cluster anywhere near other Jewish populations although they demonstrate possible plausible Jewish ancestry by uniparental markers (i.e. Middle Eastern-origin Y-haplotypes like the "Cohen gene" found in populations that otherwise have a quite different set of markers). Certainly the micro-array data wouldn't warm relations between the Mizrahim and the Ashkenazim.
At some point there will be backlash against the Haredim and some will elect to leave the fold - while it might be too late for the adults, they will give their children a secular education. Or eventually when the welfare state runs out, the Haredim themselves will recognize the value of secular education.
No one knows how the future will turn out - who could have anticipated the Nobelists who would come from the shtetl Jews. If you lined up all the bearded grandfathers or great grandfathers of all the 20th century Jewish nobelists, you would not imagined anything would come from this bunch, other than maybe a few Torah scholars. If you had seen my father as a barefoot fisherman's son in a muddy Polish shtetl, you could not have begun to imagine that his son would wear a suit to work in a skyscraper.
But no Nobelists will come from the non-existent grandchildren of the secular Jews.If, as in Greece, 100 secular Jewish grandparents have 40 grandchildren among them, it doesn't take too many generations before they vanish entirely.
K
As you well said, first one has to show up. No Jews, no Jewish geniuses. The Haredim will be there, secular modern Jews - may be.
I believe there can be a middle way between secular renegades who'll suck a dick to prove to their Ivy League goyishe friends that they're not homophobes and ignorant superstitious welfare parasites who can't speak without rocking back and forth autustically. There must be a middle way between jumping into the sewage flood of "progress" and hiding in a bomb shelter and waiting for it to be magically over. Maybe Feiglin or the Modern Orthodox will produce something.
Reform tried to be a modern Orthodoxy and in my opinion is failing to ensure continuity and survival. Apparently, rational moderation does not work.
Reform was never supposed to be anything but a Jewish version of Christianity, minus Jesus but complete with pipe organs and pork. The German Jews were going to be exactly like all other Germans except that they attended a different "church" (or temple - they no longer called them synagogues) on a different day (some even switched the day of worship to Sunday). This would put an end to anti-Semitism. In the end, the goal was for Judaism just to be another Protestant denomination, so that the difference between Jews and Christians would be no greater than the difference between Lutherans and Methodists and Episcopalians and Baptists (various Protestant denominations in the US - at one time there were (and probably still are) real doctrinal differences between them but to any outsider (me) at least they are pretty much indistinguishable - certainly you can't pick out who belongs to which on sight. Of course we know how well that worked out for the German Jews.
The Conservative movement tried to sow a reasonable middle ground in order to create a Judaism that was still recognizably Jewish (no ham) and yet compatible with modern life. But it is hard to swim right down the middle of the river - the natural tendency is to drift toward one bank or the other. Where do you draw the line? If you question any part of the mishegos, then you call all of it into question. It's either all or nothing at all.
K
Most American Reform Jews these days are not descended from German Jews, and it is an extremely rare modern Reform synagogue that still holds services on Sunday. Most modern Reform congregants are descendants of Eastern Ashkenazim who don't accept the irrational and unscientific Orthodox religious bullshit. Some don't believe in God at all but feel tied to the Jewish community, but some do espouse liberal theistic beliefs. To the extent that Reform congregations at least welcome families that are already intermarried (most Reform rabbis won't perform intermarriages), they are actually helping to preserve Jewish continuity. Without Reform, very few of those families or their children would consider retaining even the most nominal Jewish identification.
Reform Judaism has understood that it is not maintaining its numbers and is hardening its religious line. It is difficult to be separate and different and at the same time, be like everyody else.
>Most American Reform Jews these days are not descended from German Jews
As was told:
Beware lest your heart be tempted and you turn astray and worship other deities and bow down to them...You will be banished swiftly from the good land that God is granting you.
And, unsurprisingly, the German-American Reform Jews have vanished from the face of the land.
As far as the supposedly newly strict Reform shuls-what could the point of attending possibly be of attending a Reform shul where intermarriage, treif food and desecrating Shabbat are condemned be? It's a football bat.
The German-American Reform Jews have not completely vanished. Rather, the Reform movement grew significantly between 1950 and the present by winning numerous descendants of Eastern Ashkenazi immigrants. There were never that many German Jews in the U.S. to start with, such that the number of Eastern Ashkenazim dwarf them.
In that case, you'd assume there would be significantly more Reform Jews today than before, and I'm not seeing it.
Reform is the largest Jewish denomination in the U.S. If you live in New York City, it may not seem like the case because there are so many unaffiliated secular Jews as well as large concentrations of orthodox Jews. But elsewhere, even relatively non-religious Jews often maintain an affiliation, and Reform is the most common.
I did not ask about relative size. I asked about the amount of Reform Jews in the US today vs. 50 years ago. The larger question is whether being Reform (vs. Orthodox) improves your odds of having children, grandchildren etc. who are Jewish, and the numbers of those descendants. In other words, whether it improves your reproductive fitness as a Jew.
It does not, not as a Jew, not as a generic human being.
Reform did not start off as a large movement. There are more Reform Jews today than 50 years ago, perhaps not more than there were 25 years ago. 50 years ago, a greater portion of the original immigrants, who were usually Orthodox or (after immigration) Conservative, were still alive. Large numbers of their children and grandchildren moved from O to C and C to R.
You and J harp for population increase. But in the form it has taken among the ultra-Orthodox, it is dependent on massive handouts and therefore unsustainable.
Nothing human lasts forever, and I highly doubt that Judaism, only ~2800 years old, will be the first religion to break the rule. From the perspective of the distant future, all that is accomplished by having more Jewish descendants in the near future is that you might have more probably non-Jewish descendants in the distant future.
Many of their children and grandchildren, unfortunately, moved from O to C to R to A.
The "ultra-Orthodox" I've met in NY, Seattle, DC, Denver and Rhode Island have all been productive members of society and mostly upstanding human beings. None of them were welfare dependents. Stop blowing smoke up my ass.
As far as "only 2800 years"-that's longer than any other institution I see around me today.
How can you speak from the perspective of the distant future? Do you have a time machine? Tell me, how distant are you seeing? Is the sun a red giant yet?
How can one speak FROM the distant future? Since I have children, I have the RIGHT and I MUST talk from the perspective of the future.
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