THE JEWISH FUTURE IN A GLOBAL WORLD

Egon Friedler

According to a demographic investigation done by a team headed by Professor Sergio della Pergola, president of the Hartman Institute of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one of the leading demographers in the Jewish world, there are now about 13.2 million Jews in the world and it is expected that this number will grow to 15.6 million around 2080. At the beginning of the 2030s, Israel will be home for the majority of the Jewish people (now 37% of world Jewry is living in Israel) not owing to emigration to Israel, but owing to the decrease of the Diaspora's Jewry caused by low birthrates and mixed marriages.

The average age in the Diaspora is much older than in Israel. According to a study of 1995, 27% of the Jewish population in Israel are children from zero to 14, while the same group in the Diaspora is only 17.6%. Only 11.5% of the Israeli population was older than 65, whereas the figure of this age range for the rest of the Jewish world was 18.5%.

For Della Pergola there are clear-cut conclusions from these tendencies: there is no doubt that the two main causes of demographic decrease in the Diaspora are low birthrate and intermarriage. His investigation proved that there are more children of intermarriages who leave Jewish life than remain within it.

In another study written by Della Pergola, this time together with Uzi Rebhun and Mark Tolts, and published under the title Prospecting the Jewish Future: Population Projections, 2000-2080 in the American Jewish Yearbook 2000, the trends of decline of the traditional Jewish family due to the strong influence of the individualist tendencies that prevail in Western society, are studied more thoroughly. The authors of the article state that, “Observed changes included delayed marriages, higher rates of permanent non-marriage, low birthrates, growing proportions of births out of marriage (the latter still uncommon among Jews) increasing number of one-parent households, and accelerating intermarriage. Children of intermarriages have shown comparatively weak Jewish identification, while the propensity of the non-Jewish spouses to convert to Judaism has declined relative to the total number of such marriages.”

Continuing in the study, Della Pergola, Rebhun and Tolts offer very meaningful figures: “Marriages across religious lines occur only rarely in Israel. Elsewhere, around 1990, frequencies of mixed marriages surpassed 70% in Russia, Ukraine, and several smaller western Jewish communities, reached 50% in the US and (based on older evidence) France, close to 40% in the United Kingdom and probably above 30% in Canada and Australia. Divorce rates among Jews were lower than among the total population of the same countries, but the gap has narrowed considerably in recent years, reflecting more Jewish divorce. Jewish divorce was less frequent in Israel than in the largest communities worldwide.”

However, in spite of all this data, the always polemical subject of assimilation is not just an exclusive problem of the Diaspora. Actually, the percentage of non-Jews in Israeli society is steadily growing.

In an investigation updated to 2001, Professor Amnon Sofer, of Haifa University, has found that only 72% of Israeli inhabitants of Israel, about five million people, are Jewish according to the Halachah (Religious Orthodox rules that are civic Law in Israel). Another 270,000, about four percent of the population, are immigrants who received Israeli citizenship according to the Law of Return. The Arab citizens in Israel are 18% and another two percent, 150,000 people, are Palestinians who live illegally in Israel. There are also 280,000 foreign workers who compose another four percent of the population. Besides that, there are 120,000 mixed couples, in which the non-Jewish women are more than 50,000, and therefore are not recognized as Jewish by the Orthodox Religious laws.

A specialist in these subjects, Professor Asher Cohen, from Bar Ilan University (which is known for its Orthodox orientation) admits that, “Religious conversion will not do. Many of the immigrants are secular and don't want to convert.”

Dr. Cohen recognizes that the stiff positions of the rabbis are a serious difficulty. Very often they even oppose conversion when the couple is ready to undergo the long and demanding process that compels them to change their lifestyle and live according to rules that they do not believe in and do not want to adopt. Therefore, Professor Cohen thinks that it would be convenient to adopt a kind of “national conversion.” After all, he said in a press conference in June 2002, many Israelis who are not Jewish participate in many fields of national life. “They adopt the language and the culture. They serve in the army and they die just as everybody else and they are also victims of terror attacks.”

The fact that an Orthodox Jewish intellectual proposes a non-religious conversion is very important. Although his approach is still very far from being the official position of any Orthodox authority, it is a first step towards the recognition of the need to accept a pragmatic view of the realities of Jewish life in the 21st century.

In spite of the efforts of many religious groups to outreach to secular Jews the trend of secularization is growing also in the Diaspora. A Jewish Identity Survey for the Graduate Center of the City University of New York conducted in 2001 by Professors Egon Mayer, Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, revealed that nearly one million American Jews believe that their Jewish condition is not connected with religious faith.

Therefore, it is clear that the Orthodox patterns of becoming Jewish seem to be obsolete in the globalized world of the 21st century.

Secular conversion to Judaism is an old aspiration of Secular Humanistic Judaism and actually it has been a practice for many years in the United States and Canada, where there are many converts to Judaism through our Movement who have shown a genuine interest for Jewish culture and have become thoroughly involved in Jewish community life. Our profession of faith has always been that everybody who can demonstrate that he or she wants to share the lot of the Jewish people in good faith should be accepted as Jewish. This means: neither mikvah for women nor circumcision for male adults, no need to feign a faith and a religious way of life in which you do not believe, no submission to archaic rules that nobody would dare to impose on born Jews who do not identify with them.

For the time being we are still very far away from the acceptance of secular conversion by the Orthodox establishment in Israel and by Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox rabbis in the Diaspora. They do not even recognize the conversions done by other religious branches like the Conservative and Reform. Actually all the attempts done until now to find an understanding among the religious leaders of different branches about conversion have failed owing to the irreconcilable attitude of the Orthodox representatives.

For a long time it has been a truism in Jewish life that “the Jewish people has been kept alive by religion.” However, nowadays it is quite clear that religion has ceased to be a unifying factor in Jewish life. In fact it has become the deepest and most dangerous cause of division. Therefore, if we do not want the Jewish people to become a coalition of quarreling sects, if we want to enrich ourselves with a worthy and new human potential, if we want the Jewish people to be the “Am Olam” (The people of the World) as Ben Gurion defined it, we must open our doors generously. The Jewish future is too important to be left in the hands of rabbis. The large secular majority of the Jewish people must have a full right to incorporate in its ranks men and women who identify with its history and destiny, but do not want to adopt a religious lifestyle that is foreign to them. Only in this way we will be able to grow and adapt ourselves to the dynamics of a world of giddy changes.

Considering all this, secular conversion has become an urgent issue in the agenda both of Israel and the Diaspora.

Egon Friedler is a Uruguayan journalist identified with Secular Humanistic Judaism. This article was first published in Identidad in Uruguay, August 2002 and appeared in Contemplate, Issue Two/2003, published by the Center for Cultural Judaism.

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