The Pew Report – A half-filled glass

By TED ROBERTS, the SCRIBBLER ON THE ROOF

Thoughtful Jews are still trembling at the Pew Report. Many are calling it an obituary on Judaism. As we all guessed, intermarriage is up about 10% (as well as we can measure it). Conservative Judaism is losing strength. All the barometers are signaling stormy weather.

But it’s like that cup that’s either half full or half empty. It all depends on your spectacles. Things didn’t look good in Jerusalem about 70 AD, either; or at a dozen episodes of Jewish history. But look, we’re still here.

Less Jews within the formal confines of Judaism means more Jews in alien circles – and whether they know it or not, they’re still Jews and unaffiliated or not, maybe – I say maybe – they still want a Seder – they feel the call of Yom Kippur, their heart beats to a Judaic rhythm. And maybe in a passive way they spread the teachings of Torah.

Censuses can’t measure that subterranean flow of Jewish ethics and attitudes to the gentiles. In a way, you could say, surveys show less soldiers in our camps because they are invading the camps of our neighbors – bring Torah-inspired attitudes. Consider, you don’t have to be a Torah scholar to carry such gifts. It comes with the territory. A faulty metaphor, but you get the idea. Surveys can’t measure that, but it’s a perception that can staunch our tears.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t reexamine ourselves. The body of Judaism needs a good physical – especially our services. The thrill, the ecstasy of Kavannah, the union with G-d that we seek in the synagogue cannot be maintained for two hours, three hours. We must shorten the service and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to reexamine the prayers. More poetry – less prose. I don’t mean that literally. I mean more heart-moving language, less plodding repetitious expression.

We could take a lesson from our Christian friends where the church has become more than a religious headquarters. It’s scope is wide. As a generalization, we seem to have fragmented our activities between synagogue and our community centers.

We’ve made a new kind of Jew; a JCCJ, a Jewish Community Center Jew. Did they get counted in the Pew Report? He lifts weights or plays basketball or does yoga or swims in the Center. Ladies play Mah Jong as well as participate in the above. Fine, but there is an air of competition that exists. You can’t go to the Wednesday morning minion if your exercise class is also on that morning.

My only point is that Judaism has a broader face than ever before. More activities compete with the strictly religious side. The value of this is debatable. It may be healthy and worthwhile, but certainly it affects the polling results of studies such as the recent one. Christians have embodied these activities in the Church, itself. The YMCA is a thing of the past.

But the primary consolation in the Pew numbers could be the thought that those Jews who “depart” in many cases carry the essence of Judaism with them in their backpacks as they venture across boundaries. Of course, that’s immeasurable, but I think it’s a factor in looking at that half-filled glass.

One could make an analogy to the historical environment of roughly 2,000 years ago when a bunch of Jews brought a watered-down version of Judaism to a barbarous world. No, it wasn’t Torah-based, but it was a golden gift – Jewish inspired – that gilded an ethically-primitive, worldwide society that shouted “might makes right”.

That band of fugitive Jews, who thought the Moshiach had landed, brought to a turbulent world a gentling process that fostered civilization, not barbarism.

We should be proud of that even though their medicine is a brew under 100 proof. And there are cultural road signs everywhere that these divergent, heretical folk now known as Christians are slowly realizing their kinship to the progeny of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Another factor to make us smile at that half full glass of the Pew Report. Maybe we’ve unknowingly sent out a tide of (pardon the term) missionaries to a waiting world desperately in need of Jewish values.