"If anything distinguishes American Jews today within the context

Transcending religion, race, or any other traditional Judaic reference, modern American Jewry is often described these days as a voluntary (from the perspective of the individual, not the community, which claims Jews by birth to the "community of fate") polity, a secular organizational network with emphasis upon social, educational, economic and political activism. It is an organization that unifies atheists and the religious, rich and the less affluent, Sephardim, Ashkenazi, and any other self-defined "Jew" within a communal solidarity to Jewish "peoplehood" and its four unifying pillars of Jewish identity: 1) belief in a communal identity of historic persecution and victimhood and the uniqueness of Jewish suffering in the Holocaust, 2) belief in the omnipresent threat of an irrational anti-Semitism, 3) allegiance to the modern state of Israel, and 4) a dedication to helping others Jews.

The secular Jewish polity is a very adjusted model of the old obsolete "kehillah" self-governing organization that the Jewish community in Europe used to mediate with -- and distance itself from -- the surrounding non-Jewish people and cultures. While today's Jewish polity is world's apart in method and structure from the old institution, its purpose for existence today has moved towards what is was in ancient times: Jewish people distinct from, and often at the expense of, others. (Since the late 1960s, there has been a major shift in fundamental American Jewish attitudes: from helping fellow Jews assimilate fully into American mainstream society, to its polar opposite: massive amounts of money raised to support all aspects of "being Jewish.”) [SINGER, p. 220] The largest and best known expression of this polity is the United Jewish Appeal, an entity that has some 225 "federation'" sub-branches throughout the country. (In 1999, the UJA merged with other groups to form the "United Jewish Communities.") Such organizations claim a supportive base of 95% of all Jews in America. [WOOCHER] (One UJA fundraising brochure summed up its sense of itself by stating that "the programs of [our] agencies ... are not merely organizational endeavors, even 'good works' ... they are expressions of the essential meaning of Jewishness." [LIEBMAN/COHEN, p. 19]) By 1980, 4,600 "key leaders" traveled to Israel that year alone on UJA "missions." [SILBERMAN, p. 198]]

Still other Jewish polity expressions (what Daniel Elazar describes as "government-like institutions" [ELAZAR, p. 217] include B'nai Brith (and its Anti-Defamation League), Haddassah, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, the National Council for Jewish Women, and a variety of overtly Zionist organizations, most linked to the American Zion Federation. The central Jewish lobbying organ for Israel is the American Israel Political Action Committee -- AIPAC. By 1982 Jewish Americans had "no less than 340 national organizations." [KREFETZ, p. 71] More than eighty were expressly Zionist or other pro-Israeli groups. [WAXMAN, p. 134]

This modern American Jewish polity is often noted as a quintessential "civil religion," a secular belief system that elicits deeply-felt allegiance of religious depth and proportion. "It has become a commonplace in recent years," notes Peter Novick, "that Israel and the Holocaust are the twin pillars of American Jewish 'civil religion' -- the symbols that bind together Jews in the United States whether they are believers or nonbelievers, on the political right, left, or center." [NOVICK, P., 1999, p. 147] (The modern Jewish attachment to Judaism as a formal religion in most of the twentieth century has been weak. A 1971 study revealed that only 17% of American Jews attended religious services more than once a month; this was in comparison to 65% of non-Jews who did so). [FORSTER, p. 128] As in any religion, the secular Jewish polity beliefs are articles of faith. They need not make logical sense to an outside observer; even some of its adherents may recognize -- and struggle to resolve -- various incongruencies, paradoxes, and hypocrisies in its central tenets. As the Random House dust jacket blurb noted for James Yaffe's 1968 volume The American Jews: Portrait of a Split Personality, "no people on earth are more riddled by contradictions than the American Jews." [YAFFE, 1968]

These inconsistencies largely stem from Jewish attempts to rationalize their traditional (and current) notions of their exalted selves as the Chosen People in the context of a modern western society that socializes against such chauvinism, a pan-human perspective that most Jews themselves give public lip service. Jewish reluctance to surrender, however, (whatever form of) their self-perceived hereditary specialness as central to Jewish identity has created for some a lingering moral and psychological dilemma, one that the Jewish polity resolves by dissimulation and/or equivocation, by enforcing the preposterous and paradoxical Jewish myth that it is Jewish chauvinistic exceptionality itself that created the notion of pan-human universality. "[The Jewish polity believes that] America is, after all, created in their [Jewish] image," says Jonathan Woocher, "and in pursuing the civil Jewish version of Jewish destiny, they are merely reinforcing the terms of America's own understanding." [WOOCHER, p. 102]

"Whether Jews define themselves as 'just Jewish,' 'ethnic Jews,' 'nonreligious Jews,' or some other phrase that classified them as more assimilated," noted Gary Tobin in 1988, "most know that they are different from other Americans.... [TOBIN, p. 70] ... For most Jews, there continues to be a 'them' and an 'us,' even though the 'us' is in some ways part of the 'them' ... [TOBIN, p. 73] ... The majority of American Jews continue to struggle to maintain their separate identity." [TOBIN, p. 74] "Despite their strong desire for integration into American society," wrote Nathan Glazer in 1972, "Jews do not, on the whole intermarry and do maintain themselves apart. How to resolve this contradiction is one of the major dilemmas of Judaism in America." [GLAZER, p. 10]

This "contradiction" is clearly manifest in the very principles of Jewish identity that are diametrically opposed to the founding principles of Americanism. As Adam Garfinkle observes:

"The principle of individualist equality that flows from American

sacred texts and the American experience cannot be reconciled with

the hierarchical, communal principle that flows from halakhah,

Jewish religious law. Many try and some claim success, but

'success' is mere illusion. Most American Jews have two religions

the way some men have one wife and one mistress, or some women

one husband and one lover. It is a condition that can be managed,

learned from, even enjoyed, some times for long periods. But it can

never be brought to true reconciliation." [GARFINKLE, p. 4]

     After a 1950s survey of American Jews, researcher Joseph Adelson noted the "confusion" some Jews had in grappling with stereotypes about Jews that seemed to them to be true, all centering on the contradictions of Jewish identity and "self-hatred" (i.e., self-criticism):

      "It should be emphasized that the nonauthoritarian [a 1950s-era term for the
       non-prejudiced] are not free from conflicts and confusions about being Jewish;
       indeed, they frequently seem more disturbed than do the authoritarian [i.e.,
       "prejudiced" Jews who put stock in some stereotypes], in part because of a
       lesser rigidity of defense and in part because their political beliefs are often at
       variance with underlying feelings concerning Jewishness [the human universalist/Jewish        chauvinist tension]. It is doubtful whether many individuals, Jewish or Gentile, can        completely avoid incorporating our society's stereotype of the Jew. The point is
       that the authoritarian Jew accepts the stereotype and recasts it to meet the
       circumstance of his Jewishness; the nonauthoritarian Jew rejects its validity,
       fights its existence within himself, and is sometimes ridden by guilt when he
       unable to do so completely." [ADLESON, J., 1960, p. 479]

     Zalman Posner, in championing the Orthodox Chabad Lubavitcher religious world view and bemoaning the fact that there are too many secular Jews who have been misguided by concepts of human universalism, addresses the religious root in the conflict between "Christian" identity and Jewry's traditionally separatist, and intolerant, core:

     "I suggest that the American Jew conceives of religion and discusses it in
     Christian terms. He grapples with religious difficulties, because
     a Jew must examine Judaism, but he does so with Christian categories. His conflict
     is not necessarily a Jewish one, but one of reconciling divergent viewpoints,
     the Jewish and the Christian, that were never intended to be reconciled, for
     they represent thoroughly different values." [POSNER, Z., p. 31]

     Stephen Steinlight, a former American Jewish Committee official, observes that

     "Jews regularly identify with 'belief in social justice' as the second most important
     factor in their Jewish identity; it is trumped only by a 'sense of peoplehood.' It also
     explains the long Jewish involvement in and flirtation with Marxism. But it is
     fair to say that Jewish universalistic tendencies and tribalism have always existed
     in an uneasy dialectic. We are at once the most open of peoples and one second
     to none in intensity of national feeling. Having made this important distinction, it
     must be admitted that the essence of the process of my [Jewish] nationalist training
     was to inculcate the belief that the primary division in the world was between 'us'
     and 'them.' Of course we also saluted the American and Canadian flags and sang
     those anthems, usually with real feeling, but it was clear where our primary loyalty was      meant to reside." [STEINLIGHT, S., OCTOBER 2001]

   "The American Jew,"says Charles Liebman, "is torn between two sets of values -- those of integration and acceptance into American society and those of Jewish group survival. Those values appear to me to be incompatible." [LIEBMAN, C., THE AMBIVALENT ..., p. vii; QUOTED IN O'BRIEN, 2000] As Paul Cowan once underscored about his renewed Jewish identity, and the distinctness between that and being American: "Until 1976, when I was thirty-six, I had always identified as an American Jew. Now I am an American and a Jew. I live at once in the years 1982 and 5743, the Jewish year in which I am publishing this book." [COWAN, P., 1982, p. 3]

     "Every prayer and ritual observance in Judaism,” says Arthur Koestler, "proclaims membership to an ancient race, which automatically separates the Jew from the racial and historic past of the people whose midst he lives." [KOESTLER, p. 287] "Above all," says rabbi Jonathan Sacks, "the otherness of Jewish law as something given by God and interpreted by authoritative rabbis runs counter to the fundamental thought of modernity." [SACKS, J. p. 157] "Traditional views of the Gentile and the fear of anti-Semitism persist," wrote Charles Liebman and Steven Cohen in 1990, ".... This sense of estrangement from the non-Jew and fear of the non-Jew remain not only for Israelis and not only for those most deeply committed to the Jewish tradition." [LIEBMAN/COHEN, p. 40]

     Edward Bernard Glick notes his people's tradtional identity like this:

     "The Jewish people (as the American dictionary calls them), dos yiddische folk
     (as Yiddish speakers refer to themselves), and am yisrael or ha'am ha'yehudi
     (as Hebrew speakers refer to the concept) denote a transnational, multilingual,
     historical, and religious group which professes a oneness, a unity, a whole, a
     solidarity, and a partnership that predates by millenia the modern Jewish state.
     The concept applies to all Jews in the world, whether they realize it or not,
     whether they want it or not, and whether they they like it or not. For Jewish
     peoplehood is Judaism, which is a religion in the gentile sense. And the proof
     of this is that no other religious group in the world so steadily and so steadfastly
     calls itself a people. Do the multifarous denominations of American Protestantism,
     concerned as they may be with the fate of foreign Protestants, call themselves the      Methodist people, the Baptist people, the Episcopalian people, or the Presbyterian
     people? Do American Catholics ... call themselves the Catholic people, even though      catholic is a synonym for universal? Do American Muslims, American Hindus, and      American Buddhists use the word in reference to their creeds? No." [GLICK, E.,      1982, p. 125]

As large numbers of Jews left the hearts of big cities over the years, in 1959 Rabbi Albert Gordon's study called Jews in Suburbia noted that "Jews seldom come to know non-Jews any better in suburbia than they did in the big city ... To what extent is this condition the result of Jewish self-segregation? Scrutinizing each of the communities in this study with this question in mind, I discovered first of all that ... their closest friendships are reserved for other Jews who have the same community, class, synagogual and organizational interests. This primary friendship is natural -- and characteristic of every kind of suburb." [GORDON, A., p. 170] Arthur Hertzberg notes that in post-World War II America, "even those Jews who affirmed neither religious nor ethnic identity admitted that they were most comfortable with other Jews. Even the most 'anti-Jewish' Jews reported that at least four out of five of their friends were Jews. This was true even of people of Jewish origin who had converted to one of the branches of Christianity. Jewish businessmen and professionals ... did business much of the time with Americans of all origins and persuasions. They lunched often with their customers or clients, but they went home to have dinner and play cards, or to play golf on weekends, or to go to the theater or symphony, with other Jews." [HERTZBERG, A., 1989, p. 325]

"In one study," noted Susan Schneider in the 1980s, "78% of the Jews (as compared to 14% of Protestants) say that they have 'regular interactions' with at least five households of [their] relatives. What may be a uniquely Jewish way of keeping the kinship ties is the 'cousins' club,' meeting regularly to create family networks that reinforce every member's sense of belonging, of having a reference group or 'home room' even in adulthood." [SCHNEIDER, p. 265] "Jews appear to be, by origin and authentic nature, a tribe," says Jewish author Eric Kahler, "a primordial social structure and hence, in spite of their dispersion the closest related of historical communities, closer related among each other than the locally associated members of a modern nation." [KAHLER, E., 1967, p. 10-11]

By scholarly -- or any other -- accounts, the Jewish tradition of a clannish collectivism and communal self-promotive unity -- religiously or otherwise -- endures for most Jews today. "The American Jewish community is cohesive," wrote Alan Zuckerman in 1991, "... Because most American Jews occupy distinctive niches in the general social, economic, and political structure of the United States, each Jew makes decisions about friends, husband or wife, neighbors, workmates, and political associates from a set of persons, most of whom are Jews... [ZUCKERMAN, p. 15] ... The ties of residential concentration and social class place the American Jewish community into a distinctive niche in the general society." [ZUCKERMAN, p. 22] "The community of class and status among Jews," says Calvin Goldscheider, [and] occupational concentration and educational achievement at high levels [results] in [Jewish] social bonds, economic networks, and common lifestyles and interests ... [GOLDSCHEIDER, p. 135].. . The common assumption that increased levels of education and occupation would lead to assimilation of the American Jewish community [into mainstream society] ... seems to be unfounded. An examination of the empirical evidence has pointed to the very opposite conclusion. The uniqueness of the stratification profile and the distinctive social mobility patterns of American Jews mark Jews off from others and binds Jews to each other." [GOLDSCHEIDER, p. 136] "The commonality of class and status among Jews," agrees Esther Wilder, "is distinctive and results in social bonds, economic networks, common lifestyles and interests." [WILDER, 6-96]

"In America as elsewhere," noted Benjamin Ginsberg in 1994, "... Jews are outsiders who are often more successful than their hosts ... And, to make matters worse, Jews often, secretly or not so secretly, conceive themselves to be morally and intellectually superior to their neighbors." [GINZBURG, p. 8] "To be a Jew," wrote Eugene Borowitz in the 1970s," means to have a bond with every other Jew -- and somehow know how to find him." [SILBERMAN, p. 76] "In social intercourse with other Jews," says Theodore Reik, "informality and familiarity form a kind of inner security, a 'we-feeling.' They know each other and there are not many things which need to be explained. Meeting and speaking with other Jews is accompanied by the feeling that they are 'my kind of people.' It is what [Sigmund] Freud calls 'the clear awareness of an inner identity, the secret of the same inner construction.'" [REIK, T., 1962, p. 228-229]

Early in his acting career, Marlon Brando recalls walking with a Jewish friend in New York City:

"There was a woman in front of us with blond hair wearing a mink

coat and we were talking about her, when Caroline said, 'She's

Jewish.' I asked, 'How do you know?' She answered, 'Well, it's

because ... I don't know, she's just Jewish.' I said, 'You mean to

say, just because she has blond hair and a mink --" She interrupted,

'Look, I'm a Jew, and I know what Jews are like from the front,

back, side or top.' 'Well, how can you tell a Jew from a non-Jew?'

She replied, 'Well, you have to be Jewish to know that.' I was

stunned, and I thought Caroline had remarkable powers of

perception." [BRANDO/LINDSEY, 1994, p. 75]

Erich Kahler recalls and incident involving a fellow Jew (poet Richard Beer-Hofmann) in Berlin:

"His face was wrapped in a woolen scarf [against the cold] so that

only his eyes could be seen. An old orthodox Jew in his caftan came

down the stairs and stopped him. 'The gentleman is one of us (Der

Herr ist einer von uns),' he said to Beer-Hofmann, 'he will tell me

how I can get to the Nollendorfplatz.' The eyes alone were enough

     to reveal a Jew to a Jew." [KAHLER, E., 1967, p. 6]

     Former New York Times Executive Editor Max Frankel notes the following in his autobiography:

      "The best reporters and editors normally have no race, sex, or religion. They
      may charm or muscle their way into strange places, but they try not to THINK
      male or female, black or Jewish. Still, there always comes a time for exceptions.
      I remember reliving the shudders of refugee life at the sight of Hungarians trudging       across a frozen frontier swamp. I never totally banished that twinge of smug American       security when interviewing high-ranking Germans. And there's no denying the       conspiratorial bond that suddenly appeared when an old man on a park bench in Kiev       whispered, BIST AH YID? Are you a Jew? was a question often put to me, and
      with decidedly different inflections. In Communist countries, it came from Jews
      who meant thereby to ask whether they could trust me with seditious conversation.
      In Israel, it was asked to discover whether I would ever put my feelings for the Jewish       state ahead of my journalistic mission. Now that I had charge of editorials at the       Times, the question was usually hurled with contempt; I was obviously a Jew, but
      in the eyes of many Jews, an unworthy one for daring to criticize the Israeli       government. So whenever I turned to the subject of Israel, there was no escaping
      my skin." [FRANKEL, M., 1999, p. 397]

"Jewish civilization should have vanished a long time ago," says Henry Feingold, "that it did not and does not may also be part of Jewish exceptionalism. It may well be that Judaism is governed by different rules ... Jews are a subgroup in this dynamic society; but they are also more Jewish, as measured by the concern for Jewish people throughout the world." [FEINGOLD, p. 52] "90% [of American Jews] claim to feel 'very close' or 'fairly close' to other Jews," noted Alan Zuckerman in 1991, " ... Even when they select non-Jews [as spouses and friends], most Jews have strong ties which pull them back to the Jewish community." [ZUCKERMAN, p. 27] "The Jews," noted Jonathan Rieder in his study of Jews and Italians in a section of Brooklyn, "had a pronounced feeling of ethnic honor, another sign of their willingness to invest in loyalties beyond the nuclear family. The articulateness of Jewish identity, and the capacity for immersion in the collective experience of Jewish suffering, ran contrary to the muteness of Canarasie Italians about their ethnicity." [REIDER, J., 1985, p. 46]

In 1993 Joel Kotkin noted that "an estimated 50 per cent or more of American Jews send their children to an ethnic school, and over three-quarters of young men undergo the traditional bar mitzvah ceremony. In contrast, counterpart systems promoting specifically Italian or German language, culture, and history largely have disappeared in most major countries of immigration. Even among inter-married couples ... a large majority claim that most of their friends were Jews." [KOTKIN, p. 35] In 1988 eight of ten American Jews still participated in some sort of yearly Passover ritual. [WHITFIELD, AMERICAN, p. 6] One study showed that as late as the 1970s, "96% of American Jews only had Jewish relatives, 77% had all their closest friends as Jews, 60% belonged to Jewish community organizations, virtually all of them gave to Jewish charities, and 90% felt a strong attachment to Israel." [FORSTER, p. 129]

In a 1982 study of the American Jewish community, "61% of the respondents reported that 'all,' 'almost all,' or 'most' of their friends were Jewish. "About two-thirds of American Jews still form their closest friendships with other Jews," noted Stephen Whitfield in 1988, "The process of acculturation may have blurred distinctions between Jews and their gentile neighbors, but a sense of peoplehood has not been entirely suppressed." [WHITFIELD, AM, p. 6] In 1988 Gary Tobin could still write that "a study of the Jewish population of New York City found 70% of respondents saying that all of their three close friends are Jewish." [TOBIN, p. 69] In a 1990 survey of American Jews, 60% selected the statement "I see the Jewish people as an extension of my family"; only 23% disagreed. 74% agreed that "As a Jew I have a special responsibility to help other Jews"; only 14% disagreed. [LIEBMAN/COHEN, p. 18] (Jews in Russia? Jewish scholar Zvi Gitelman in 1994 "found that Jews overwhelmingly reported that their closest friends were Jewish." [SACKS, M., 1998, p. 264]

     "No matter where I was," says Ze'ev Chafets, about his travels across America in 1986, "-- in a Jewish farm town in New England or a black synagogue in Queens, in a gay temple in San Francisco or among the Jews of the Louisiana bayou -- I always felt at home. I came to the United States feeling like an Israeli; I left reminded that I am also, as a friend in Detroit put it, an MOT -- a Member of the Tribe." [CHAFETS, MEMBERS, p. 8-9]

    Stephen Bloom notes his enduring Jewish identity this way:

     "Despite the lack of Jewish worship and observance, and my family's total
     assimilation into everything American and secular, we were thoroughly Jewish
     as was our very essence. The world was split into two distinct halves: Jews
     and gentiles. Jews were always sought in business or social dealings over
     gentiles. A common expresion used by Jews to describe a slow, dense
     person was -- and still is -- 'He's got a goyisher kop,' which literally means
     'He's got a gentile head' but figuratively means 'slow-witted.' First question
     when I came home and boasted of making a new friend was 'Is he Jewish?'
     'God forbid!' (my father's expression) if I should ever go out with a gentile
     girl, and 'Oy vey!' (which literally means 'Oh, pain!') if I ever got serious
     with her. All my parents' friends were Jews." [BLOOM, S., 2001, p. 63]

"This clannishness, as it appears to others," says Charles Silberman, "is rooted in the sense of destiny that Jews the world over share with one another -- a destiny that has some transcendent (and transcendental) significance." [SILBERMAN, p. 76] ("The destiny of the Jewish people," writes Jean Francois Steiner, " ... no earthly power has ever been able to defeat." [HOWE, p. 445]) This clustering, in the largest sense, has a very geographical flavor; over 95% of American Jews congregate in cities and nearby suburbs; in fact, 80% of them live in only ten population centers -- New York City and Los Angeles are the two largest. [WHITFIELD, AMERICAN, p. 6] A third of all American Jews live in the New York-New Jersey area. [SILBIGER, S., 2000, p. 5] (City-wise, by 1999, the greater Miami Jewish population, about 653,000 people, ranked second only behind New York City). [BELKIN, D., 5-6-99] Linking modern Jewish American geography to their roots in a separatist ghetto past, in 1978 Nachum Goldmann added that "even today Jews have a tendency to live in a neighborhood of their own, in an environment that facilitates the life of their community." [GOLDMANN, N., 1978, p. 66] [Click here for world geography of the Jews] (American Jews are overwhelmingly of Eastern European background. By the late 1950s, more than four-fifths were estimated to be of Eastern European descent). [GRINSTEIN, H., 1959, p. 73]

In London, England, the Jewish Chronicle noted in 2002 the results of a local survey:

"London Jews also like to be near other Jews. More than 97 per cent in North and North West London say they know of another Jewish resident in the same street, while more than half (two-thirds in the North West) have a next-door Jewish neighbor. More than 80 per cent in the North East, and more than 90 per cent in the North West, have a Jewish neighbour within three doors away." [JEWISH CHRONICLE, 12-6-02, p. 31] [Note: South London percentages are much, much smaller -- poorer part of town?]

Decades earlier, the descendants of other peoples who had immigrated to America with the last major Jewish wave had already assimilated into American culture. In 1964, Arthur Hertzberg was noting that "the grandchildren of the Italians, the Slavs and the rest have become completely assimilated culturally ... The ... European immigrants of the last century have failed to provide Jews with a parallel for their devotion to some continuity for their own subculture." [HERTZBERG, p. 287]

James Yaffe notes that

"In 1962 AJC [the American Jewish Committee] studied the Jewish

community in Baltimore and came to these conclusions: Jewish

employees are much more likely to work for Jewish employers;

although most Jews claim they don't care what religion their doctor

or lawyer professes, they nevertheless use Jewish doctors 95 percent

of the time and Jewish lawyers 87 percent of the time; the great majority

of them say that it doesn't matter to them if their children go to a school

that has only Jewish pupils in it -- yet 90 percent send their children to

schools which are predominantly Jewish." [YAFFE, J., 1968, p. 65]

In 1973, Harry Golden noted that:

"Affluence and the census explain two of the obvious characteristics

of Jewish mobility: when Jews move, they all move at once and they

all want to move to the same place. For Jews want the enclave. They

cluster." [GOLDEN, H., 1973, p. 43]

This clustering has a transnational flavor. As Harold Troper noted about the Jews of Canada in 1999:

"Even today, no other ethnic group in Canada is as institutionally

complete, nor does any other group have a comparable degree of

communal self-awareness, as measured by knowledge of organizations

and leaders, voluntarism and reading of the ethnic press, community

fund raising, and individual self-identification. Compared to most other

groups, and certainly compared to other ethno-European groups, Jews

are a highly identified, unassimilated group ... Many Jews in Canada

demonstrate a deeply held feeling of mutual interdependence and

transnational identification with Jews everywhere that defies any

explanation." [TROPER, H., 1999, p. 228, 232]

This is what the Jewish Chronicle noted about London Jews, as reported by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, in 2002:

"80 per cent had watched a programme of Jewish interest [in the past year], 53 per cent had read a book on a Jewish topic, while just 10 per cent had not participated in any kind Jewish cultural activity or bought a piece of Judaica of any kind. A third had attended a Jewish lecture, and one in five a synagogue adult-education programme; 24 per cent had been to a Jewish film, theatre or music event; and 24 per cent had visited a Jewish museum outside the UK. Around 60 per cent had been to at least one Jewish educational or cultural event ... More than half of those surveyed had done some type of voluntary work for their synagogue or another Jewish organisation in the past year ... As many as 13 per cent had served as a trustee on a Jewish charit ... Forty-six per cent attached highest priority to Jewish causes in the UK; 20 per cent to general British charities; 14 per cent to Israel; and 11 per cent equally to Jewish and Israeli charities [i.e., noted that 71% of Jews placed higher priority on Judeo-centric welfare over pan-British welfare, which received only a 20% priority figure] ... 'What is absolutely apparent,' the report comments, 'is that London Jews have long sinced ceased to comprise a religious group. They are truly an ethnie (ethnic group) within British society, with shared historical memories, a myth of common ancestry ... and an overall sense of solidarity ... More than 90 per cent think it important for their children to mix with in Jewish social groups, and 89 per cent are willing to send their children on an Israel trip -- an "amazingly high" figure, the report notes, given the conflict in the Middle East." [JEWISH CHRONICLE, 12-6-02, p. 31]

Jonathan Woocher, in his volume about the Jewish American polity, notes that: "The civil religion knows that the goals of Jewish group survival and social integration [with mainstream American society] are indeed in tension. Civic Judaism's world view and ethos in fact incorporates a host of assertions which are potentially contradictory." These include the Jewish insistence that they are "under siege" while they enjoy unprecedented freedom, prosperity, and opportunity in America, the notion that all Jews are "one people" when in fact they are -- in modern times -- as diverse as any other group in every possible manner (except perhaps, throughout most of the world, for their usual similarities in relatively high income and social status), the idea that the modern state of Israel is their "home" when they have perfectly fine homes here (indeed, homes that are even "safer" than the Jewish ones overseas), the common secular Jewish belief that Judaism's distinctive ideals are social justice, equality, et al when mainstream American society's ideals are (and have always been since the founding of the nation) no different, and the expending of so much time, energy, and money on themselves as Jews (much of it internationally) when the American social contract expects a foremost Jewish responsibility to their fellow Americans (or simply fellow humans) as equal members of the American polity. "Civic Judaism," notes Woocher, "is ... a religion of thorough-going ambivalence, of paradox, and inconsistency." [WOOCHER, p. 98] We might also add the fact that Jews portray themselves always as victims, when they are in fact the wealthiest and most influential ethnic group in America.

While, David Davis, a Jewish professor at Yale can, like most American Jews, completely mythologize Jewish history as "a testing ground for American ideals, especially the ideal of apportioning rewards according to individual merit as opposed to hereditary privilege or ethnic identity," [DAVIS, D., p. 27] another Jewish professor, Adam Garfinkel, states more honestly, and bluntly, that "the underlying harmony between Jewish and American values vanishes upon close inspection." [GARFINKLE, p 5]

Concerned about his peoples' modern schizophrenic identity, Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner wrote:

"Why American Jews sustain the contradictory position of deeming

the state of Israel to be critical to their own existence as a distinctive,

self-sustaining group in American society, and also insisting that

they and their future find permanent place within American society,

has to be worked out. Here is a strange civil religion ... What is

puzzling is not that political events -- the destruction of a group, the

formation of a national state -- should generate dislocation in society

and so in people's imagination. It is that the state of dislocation

should be made into a permanent and, if truth be told, normative

condition of a group." [NEUSNER, STRANGER, p. 3]

Among the most disturbing paradoxes, however (one not lost to many Jews, but rarely addressed publicly) is the one that James Madison foresaw in the very establishing of the American constitution. In a free society of competing ideas and interests, there is always the inevitable danger that a powerful "faction" (or factions) could successfully coagulate to disbalance the fullest expression of pluralistic opinion and subvert the idealized democratic process. The obvious example of this is the innocent "one person, one vote" democratic principle which is a trivial cosmetic to hide the powerful economic interests that function offstage where real political power, influence, and decision-making lies. Ironically, in the honing of the modern liberal American state of multicultural and pluralistic tolerance (which Jews were influential in demanding, to the letter of the law, in recent decades) the conditions were established whereby American Jewry could launch itself as a minority "superpower," to the inevitable detriment of others in the American social experiment, Arabs, and those in other parts of the Third World, and at the expense of the very pluralistic ideals which Jews have exploited to chauvinist ends. In the American cultural tradition of "rugged individualism," the relentless Jewish collectivist entity -- economic, political, and social -- could, and is, vanquishing all foes in its aim of Jewish exclusionist allegiances, an aim that ironically seeks to bend the full American polity to the Jewish exclusionist will. This aim has thus far been successful, especially per American popular views toward the modern state of Israel. Part of the strategy (intentionally or de facto) is to weaken all competing unification efforts by potentially larger non-Jewish polities; numerically weaker ones (i.e., "minorities") have served as Jewish allies in so far as the Jewish polity may lead them to expressly Jewish goals and benefits. In recent history other American ethnic groups -- particularly Blacks -- have rebelled against Jewish hegemony in the modern contesting tribal battles called multiculturalism, which Jews were instrumental in creating to protect their own "particularism."

Indeed, the modern American milieu of "cultural pluralism" (laid bare, the celebration of ethnic ethnocentrism as a foundation of the American cultural milieu) affords the American Jewish community the safest framework for its own expression of global Jewish nationalism. Zionism, the modern secular ideology of transnational Jewish allegiance (a hard-core political creed and not merely a champion of Jewish "culture"), owes much of its success to its careful nurturing amidst America's Jewry and American society at-large. An Israeli professor of history, Allon Gal, notes that

"A major characteristic of American Zionist ideology is its acceptance

of the concept that has become known as 'cultural pluralism' ... This

philosophy ... has typified American Zionist thought since the early

twentieth century ... True, the focus of Zionist interest has been on

building an autonomous Jewish community in Palestine. But the

successful development of the Jewish community in America and its

constructive relationship with the pluralistic society at large have always

loomed large in American Zionist thought and deed. Living in

democratic and pluralistic America, Zionists looked for a general

American rationale for creating the Jewish state against many heavy

"Pluralism," remarks Kevin MacDonald, "serves internal Jewish [American] interests because it legitimizes the internal Jewish interests in rationalizing and openly advocating an interest in Jewish group commitments and non-assimilation." [MCDONALD, INVOLVEMENT, p. 296] The Jew in America, warned Israel's first prime minister David Ben Gurion, "faces death by a kiss -- a slow and imperceptible decline into the abyss of assimilation." [WEYL, N., 1968, p 293-294] "Solomon Schechter," noted Allon Gal, "the chief architect of Conservative Judaism [one of the major branches of the faith today], supported Zionism in 1906 mainly 'as the great bulwark against assimilation.'" [GAL, A., 1986, p. 376]

     Jews have been the foremost activists in molding public institutions and opinon towards what is today called "political correctness," intergroup "tolerance," the celebration of ethnic differences, and and multiculturalism. "While the intergroup relations field included representatives of various racial, religious, and ethnic communities," notes Stuart Svonkin,

     "Jewish organizations played the leading role indefining the movements tactics and
     objectives. Among the Jewish agencies that became involved in intergroup
     relations, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Anti-Defamation League
     of B'nai B'rith (ADL), and the American Jewish Congress (AJC) were the most
     active and influiential. These three national secular agencies aspired to function
     as the Jewish community's department of state formulating and implementing
     policies to shape American Jewry's relations with other American communities
     ... The AJCongress explicitly favored cultural pluralism and strongly supported
     Jewish nationalism. These two commitments were closely connected; Horace
     Kallen, who deveoped the theory of cultural pluralism, was himself an
     ardent champion of both the AJCongress and American Zionism."
     [SVONKIN, S., 1997, p. 1, 23]

This man, Kallen, most credited with the conception and development of cultural pluralism (the ethnocentric vehicle by which Zionism could unobjectionably thrive in the United States) was an American Jewish professor, most active in the teens and 1920s. He argued a sharp distinction between "nationality" (being Jewish) and "citizenship" (being American). [SCHMIDT, p. 38] One author calls Kallen "the grandfather of multiculturalism;" his important collection of essays was entitled Culture and Democracy in the United States. "Although the ideas contained within it had little impact at the time," says John Miller, "they became enormously influential later in the century. Horace Kallen was the first multiculturalist." [MILLER, p. 80]

Kallen was also so great a Zionist that he was the "leader and guiding spirit" of "an elite secret society called the Parushim, the Hebrew word for 'Pharisee' and 'separatist.'" [GROSE, p. 54, 53] "You will be subject," stated the inductor in the Parushim swearing-in ceremony, "to an absolute duty whose call you will be impelled to heed at any time, in any place, and at any cost." [SCHMIDT, p. 77] Kallen wrote to the prominent German Zionist, Max Nordeau, in 1914, saying, "[I] t happened to be my turn to lead the secret organization here in America which is aiming to turn the Zionist movement in a political direction, from within. Our order is called Parushim ... Our present purpose is one of quiet propaganda and education in 'the political idea' ... It is our desire and plan to organize brotherhoods all over the world." [SCHMIDT, p. 79] "[A]n organization which has the aims we have," Kallen wrote to a fellow American Zionist leader, "must work silently, and through education and infection rather than through force and noise." [SCHMIDT, p. 83] Under great influence of Kallen's thinking was a Jewish United States Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis (who was also the eventual director of the Federation of American Zionists). "Certainly Kallen wished to 'instruct' Brandeis," notes Sarah Schmidt, "and perhaps, covertly, even to manipulate him. But Kallen's preference was for the role of anonymous, self-effacing string puller." [SCHMIDT, p. 85]

"Against those powerful Jews who argued that a Jewish nationalism was unpatriotic and seditious," notes Kevin Avruch, "Brandeis put forth the contrary notion: 'Zionism is the Pilgrim inspiration and impulse over again.'" [AVRUCH, K., 1981, p. 30]

Using the idea of cultural pluralism to buttress his Zionist arguments, Horace Kallen, notes David Levering Lewis, "rejected assimilation and proposed instead that Jews retain their 'racial' uniqueness, the better to enrich American society." [HERTZBERG, p. 283, LEWIS p. 553] Henry Feingold notes that:

"Writing in the definitive Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic

Groups, Philip Gleason finds a 'racialist' dimension in Kallen's

approach to the pluralism idea and suggests that the number of Jewish

thinkers attracted to the notion -- Franz Boas, Mordecai Kaplan, and

others -- has the earmarks of a Jewish intellectual conspiracy to create

space for a Jewish culture. There may be some truth in that idea ... The

legitimacy of Zionism would not have been established without the

ideological rationale put forward by the cultural pluralists."

Kallen wrote that "[human associations] have constituted communities tending to preserve and to sustain the continuity of the physical stock. Empirically, race is nothing more than this continuity confirmed and enchanneled in basic social inheritances. It is hardly distinguishable from nationality." [in MILLER, J., p. 84] He also asserted that "men may change their clothes, their politics, their wives, their religions, their philosophies, to a greater or less extent; they cannot change their grandfathers." [BIALE, D., 1998, p. 25] Elsewhere, Kallen addressed the idea of anti-Semitism as the veritable foundation of Jewish identity: "Anti-Semitism imposes a unity upon Jews whether they like it or not ... Only by working together may each be better defended than if he worked alone. This fact should guide Jewish education ... It has to recognize that Jews are members of one another; that each Jew carries a responsibility, not only as an individual but as a member of a group called Jews." [KALLEN, 1954, p. 188-189]

Working for decades for acceptance in American society at-large, many Jews have even deceptively championed -- for popular consumption -- Judeo-centric Zionism, however incongruously, as a universalistic creed. As Allon Gal observes

"American Zionist thinkers emphasized the non-nationalist or

'higher' social and ethical goals as the fulfillment of Zionism;

the rationale of Zionism was perceived as it service to the

betterment of mankind. In pure form this ideology held that

serving the human race was the only, or the chief test of

Zionism." [GAL, 1986, p. 363]

The notion of a "mission" to serve humanity (although there is absolutely no evidence that Zionism has ever benefited anyone on earth but Jews) blended well with American democratic ideals and self-conceptions. With the acceptance of cultural pluralism and its institution into the American social fabric, notes Peter Grose, "the way lay open ... to link Jewish group identity, through Zionism, to the American Dream." [GROSE, p. 55] "Once Kallen became convinced that the American Zionist movement was developing in accord with his ideas," notes Sarah Schmidt, "he began to use his contacts with the non-Jewish media as 'propagandists' for the Zionist cause." [SCHMIDT, p. 93]

(By World War II, Zionist propagandistic activities had enormously grown and accelerated. As Zionist historian Melvin Urofsky notes: "The Zionists, throughout the war period, carefully cultivated Christian America. From a standpoint of practical politics alone, the Zionists recognized that only if the larger community supported their aims would they be able to influence government policy. A minority, no matter how effacious its propaganda or skillful public relations, no matter how many important contacts it has made, cannot affect American foreign policy unless it either neutralizes the majority or wins it over to active support of its cause." [UROFSKY, 1978, p. 35] )

Yet even an American environment of mutually tolerant ethnicities is not what traditional Jewish identity really seeks. Zionism is not only interested in "foreign policy." As Arthur Hertzberg wrote in a B'nai B'rith publication in 1964:

"[Cultural pluralism] has not ... succeeded in achieving its very patent

'Jewish' purpose, to reorganize America in such a fashion that all of its

various communities would so live their lives that the Jews could, in the

very act of being themselves, be just like everybody else. There are two

keys to this failure: politics and culture. In both dimensions the Jews

have acted uniquely and not like any of the other minorities."

In other words, even in a revised American socio-cultural system that been entirely reformed to accommodate "patent Jewish purpose," cultural pluralism is still not enough for those Jews who refuse to completely assimilate, it is merely a means to discretely reach strata even more foreign to the founding principles of America: Jews implicitly demand a special dimension of "uniqueness" -- their own caste -- outside the realm of all others in the American experiment, by which they can connect to their Jewish brethren throughout the world. Even Israel Zangwill, the Jewish writer who is generally credited with popularizing the term "The Melting Pot" (the long-dead concept of America as a kind of homogenized 'soup' of immigrant cultures) to describe American society (via his successful 1908 play of the same name), was eventually a Zionist. "He gave more and more of his energy to this cause as time passed, and retreated from his earlier position of racial and religious mixture." [GLAZER/MOYNIHAN, p. 289-290] (This is what Zangwill wrote about the traditions of his own people: "Beware of the goyim, his elders told Jacob ... They are goyim, foes of the faith, beings of darkness ... drunkards and bullies, swift with the fist or bludgeon, many in species, but the worst of the goyim are the creatures called Christians." [GONEN, p. 133]

Nathan Glazer still felt confident in publishing the following in 1972 in his classic volume, American Judaism:

"There are different branches of Judaism today, and they take

somewhat different attitudes to assimilation, but even the most liberal

interpretation of Judaism must fight the assimilation of the Jews ...

Jews have been prominent in the fight to forward the assimilation of

ethnic groups ... [Yet] there comes a time -- and it is just about upon

us -- when American Jews become aware of a contradiction between

the kind of society America wants it to become -- and indeed the kind

of society most Jews want it to be -- and the demands of the Jewish

religion. This religion after all, prohibits inter-marriage, asserts that

Jews are a people apart, and insists that they consider themselves in

exile until God restores them to the land of Israel." [GLAZER, p. 9]

(In a footnote Glazer partially exempts the Reform Judaism

movement who "don't consider themselves in exile; they do

disapprove of intermarriage.")

Richard L. Rubenstein, among many Jewish intellectuals, increasingly echoes such entrenched "particularist" themes (and, hence, Zionism) in the 1990s, arguing that: "The secular humanist is most cognizant of abstract universal values that are shared with other human beings ... [but] one must be a particular kind of person to be a person at all. The conception of humanity in general is a meaningless and tragic abstraction." [RUBENSTEIN, R. p. 238]

"Cultural pluralism," says Henry Feingold, "... became part of a strategy to permit more space for the expression of Jewish particularity ... some argue that, in its unwavering support of Israel, American Jewry had gone beyond its bounds. If that is true, it is a measure of America's extraordinary tolerance of American Jewry's particularity." [FEINGOLD, p. 149] "Legitimizing the preservation of a minority culture in the midst of a majority's host society," says Howard Sachar, "pluralism functioned as an intellectual anchorage for an educated Jewish second generation ... until the emergence of Zionism in the post-World War II years swept through American Jewry with a climactic redemption fervor of its own." [MCDONALD, p. 299]

Strident activists at all levels in shaping American culture, Jewish organizations have long fought for open and diverse immigration to America, mainly to divert the homogeneity of Christian culture around them. In an increasingly diverse society, Jews are less easily singled out for criticism or attack. "Increasing ethnic heterogeneity," noted Jewish activist Earl Raab, "as a result of immigration, has made it even more difficult for a political party or mass movement of bigotry to develop." [MCDONALD, p. 300] "Jewish influence on immigration policy," observed Kevin McDonald, "was facilitated by Jewish wealth, education, and social status. Reflecting its general disproportionate representation in markers of economic success and political influence ... [Jews] were able to command a high level of financial, political, and intellectual resources in pursuing their political aims." [MCDONALD, JEWISH, p. 301]

In the 1920, Horace Kallen's ideological counterpoint, American sociologist Edward Ross, criticized "the endeavor of Jews to control the immigration policy of the United States," [MCDONALD, p. 319] especially in lobbying for more and more Jewish immigrations to America. "The systematic campaign," complained Ross, "in newspapers and magazines to break down all arguments for restriction and to calm nativist fears is waged by one and for one race. Hebrew money is behind the National Liberal Immigration League and its numerous publications." [MCDONALD, p. 312] (Even today, 300,000 Israeli citizens are living in America; from a total Jewish Israeli population of about four million people, this means that every thirteenth Israeli lives in the United States, extremely favorable American immigration policy towards that country).

Later, as part of a concerted strategy, notes Irving Kristol,

"Ever since the Holocaust and the emergence of the state of Israel,

American Jews have been reaching towards a more explicit and

meaningful Jewish identity, and have been moving away from the

universalist secular humanism that was so prominent a feature in their

prewar thinking. But while American Jews want to become more Jewish,

they do not want American Christians to become more Christian."

Jewish deconstructive attack upon the Christian world view may be noted more recently in an incident in 1994 when the preeminent Jewish American "defense agency", the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, turned on the conservative Christian community with venom, publishing a report entitled The Religious Right: the Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism in America. It proclaimed that the conservative Christian movement was an "exclusionist" movement seeking to "restore what it perceived as the ruins of a Christian nation by seeking more closely to unite its version of Christianity with state power." [SILK, p. 296] The ADL attack caught the Christian community by surprise. Outraged, they pointed out that their own struggle for a voice in America was no different than anyone else’s, including Jews.

A major focus of the ADL assault was upon Pat Robertson, a leader of the Christian Coalition and the Christian Broadcasting Network, a man who has for years even hired a formal Jewish liaison -- Ben Waldman -- to act on his behalf in the Jewish community. (The head of Robertson's legal center, the American Center for Law and Justice, is Jay Sekulow, a Christian who was born Jewish. Another Christian, Lou Sheldon, head of the Traditional Values Coalition, was also born to a Jewish mother). [LAPIN, D., 1999, p. 275] Robertson was particularly outraged by the Jewish attack, and noted his stellar record in supporting Jewish and Israeli issues. The Christian Broadcasting Network, for example, had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United Jewish Appeal and other Jewish charities; Robertson had also lobbied American politicians against arms sales to Arab adversaries of Israel. He even was involved in supportive activities for convicted Jewish American spy (for Israel), Jonathan Pollard. [SILK, p. 297] The Christian Coalition responded with its own report that documented the inaccuracies and offenses in the ADL's efforts to stifle Christian expressions within the context of religious pluralism, A Campaign of Falsehoods: The Anti-Defamation League's Defamation of Religious Conservatives.

A rare voice of reason in the Jewish community, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, noted publications by both the ADL and the American Jewish Committee (for example, its The Political Activity of the Religious Right: A Critical Analysis) that defamed the Christian community, writing:

"[The ADL] published a book filled with unfair and untrue defamation

of religious conservatives. It contained such unrestrained invective

as, 'The religious Right brings to the debate over moral and social

issues a rhetoric of fear, suspicion and even hatred.' As a rabbi and

a Jew, I was embarrassed at the tone of both of these books. Had any

Christian association published anything comparable about the Jewish

community, cries of anti-Semitism would have rung out far and wide --

and been justified ... [LAPIN, D., 1999, p. 40] ... Even a quick glance

at publications and direct-mail appeals from the Anti-Defamation League,

American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress and others,

reveals a level of rhetoric that far exceeds the bounds of civilized

political discourse. Their words demonstrate that many Jewish

organizations do not merely consider devout, politically active

Christians to be misguided -- they consider them evil. I believe that

if the term anti-Semitism is to retain any intellectual and moral

integrity, we must also today admit to the term anti-Christianism. If

one is to be fought, then surely both should be." [LAPIN, D., 1999, p.

     41]

    (Meanwhile, a Jewish ethnic magazine can feature, merely as a curiosity, a "Modern Orthodox" rabbi, Mayer Schiller, for his championing of "race separation." The magazine explains that the rabbi, a teacher in good standing at the Yeshiva University High School for Boys, doesn't teach "hatred for racial minorities, but a rejection of post-Enlightenment universalism and secularism.") [EDEN, A., 4-13-01]

Jewish anti-Christian bashing is expressed in many ways. In 1999, Rabbi Fred Guttman wrote an angry editorial in a Greensboro, North Carolina, newspaper, complaining about an earlier article in the paper about a Christian business directory. "The guide," the directory's publisher had explained, "performs a service for the Christian consumer, enabling him to find and do business with fellow believers." [WILLIS, V., 1999, 11-15-99, p. B1] Incredibly, not only did Rabbi Guttman decide for everyone that the story had no news value, he also had the profound gall to compare the nature of such a directory (that sought merely to network in business with other dedicated Christians) to be parallel to Nazi intent! How so? "As a Jew reading this article," he complained,

"I could not help but recall the Nuremberg laws of 1935 [the Nazi

race laws]. These laws mandated a boycott of all non-Aryan businesses

in Germany ... The guide implies that there should be an economic

boycott of non-Christian businesses. Thus, the parallel to the Nuremberg

laws is certainly fitting. Even more disturbing was the forum that the

News and Record chose to give such free and positive publicity to

such a nonnewsworthy item. It saddened me that a group that

encourages bias and bigotry through de facto economic boycotts

would receive support from the News and Record. At the very least,

the News and Record should consider taking an editorial stance against

this so-called 'Christian' yellow pages." [GUTTMAN, F., 11-26-99, p.

Rabbi Gutman's outrageous attack upon, and defamation of, a local Christian interest in networking with like-minded people created a stir in the Greensboro area. Gutman's hypocrisy is breath-taking. Throughout multi-cultural America there are Iranian business directories, Arab business directories, Armenian business directories, Muslim business directories, and many others including, of course, Jewish business directories. (See, for example, the national Jewish "yellow pages" by Sharon and Michael Strassfeld. Or the one called The Jewish Yellow Pages: A Directory of Goods and Services by Mae Rockland Tupa. Or note England's Benjamin Cohen who became a millionaire at age 17 for his Jewishnet Internet site. He "started Jewishnet from his bedroom and aimed to provide a business directory for the community.") [DAILY MAIL, 1-6-2000, p. 83] And the intensity of Jewish collective support for each other has few, if any (as we will continue to explore), equals in modern America.