[In the same vein, over 80% of Jewish philantropy goes to non Jewish causes. Read also : The future of Jewish philanthropy]
Where Have All the Volunteers Gone?
By Leslie Lenkowsky, Jewish Ideas Daily
In the 1990’s, the Harvard social scientist Robert D. Putnam triggered national hand-wringing over his book Bowling Alone, which showed plummeting rates of voluntary and charitable activities among Americans, a people known since de Tocqueville’s day as the world’s most public-minded citizenry. Though some of Putnam’s findings and conclusions were challenged, he brought to consciousness the degree to which the venerable American readiness to assume personal responsibility for community problems could not be simply taken for granted. That young people registered as much less likely to be “joiners” than their elders only underscored the point.
Many Jewish leaders shared these concerns. For them, the issue crystallized in the waning support for Jewish communal organizations like synagogues, schools, hospitals, and social-service agencies. Their worries sparked a vigorous campaign to stir the allegiances of young Jews and led to a proliferation of service groups with names like Avodah, Panim el Panim, and JCorps. One such organization, Repair the World (after the Hebrew phrase “tikkun olam”), has now produced the first national study of the results of this campaign, based on a poll of young Jewish adults aged eighteen to thirty-five.
The good news is that large numbers are indeed volunteering. The bad news is that very few of them want anything to do with Judaism.
The survey, conducted by Brandeis University’s Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and the Washington polling company Gerstein/Agne, focused chiefly on former participants in Taglit-Birthright Israel, the American Jewish community’s flagship investment in building Jewish identity among young people. Of those polled, a whopping 80 percent reported having volunteered during the previous twelve months. This puts Jewish youth far ahead of the general American population, among whom, in the past year, even the most educated showed only a 42-percent rate of volunteerism.
But in one critical area, Jews are not only failing to hold their own but are markedly underperforming. When it comes to volunteering for religious groups, a venue that commands the primary attention of about one-third of Americans in general, the comparable figure for young Jews is only 22 percent. The remaining 78 percent report indifference to the distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish venues, with 18 percent of these actually expressing a preference for the latter.
The charitable impulses of Jewish young people, the study finds, are more likely to be motivated by values like making “a difference in people’s lives” or doing “something meaningful with friends or family” than by appeals to specifically Jewish purposes. Even invoking the supposedly all-encompassing Jewish obligation of tikkun olam is apt to carry less weight with them than an English-language, secularly-worded injunction, incumbent on all people, to help the needy.
What has gone wrong? Some of the responsibility may rest with the organizations themselves, which are mainly intent on increasing social activism tout court. To this end, they are focusing chiefly on educating their participants about hunger, homelessness, and other social problems, or on encouraging them to campaign for more generous public policies. (The website of one such group, Mazon, currently features a critique of proposals to reduce the federal budget for food stamps.) How Jewish ideas or beliefs might inform one’s response to these issues typically receives little attention.
In addition, tikkun olam as a Jewish value has clearly lost whatever power it once had to motivate, let alone inspire. In its modern, secular incarnation, the term was already divorced from its original, specifically religious meanings; according to one of these, Jews are commanded to help create a world in which people will live according to God’s laws. Instead, tikkun olam was reinterpreted as the impulse to act benevolently in the public sphere, and descended from there into a hackneyed cliché for supporting liberal or “progressive” social programs. Little wonder that, indistinguishable from other religious or secular rationales for charitable behavior, the phrase seems to have lost any specifically Jewish resonance.
Or, strangely enough, is the problem that it has too much Jewish resonance? So it would seem from the Repair the World study, which reports that, as a message, tikkun olam has become too particularistic for the majority of Jewish young adults, and that “it lacks the strength of a more universal message of helping individuals in need.” Ironically, the study concludes that if the goal is to increase Jewish social activism, the organized community would do well to drop any conspicuously Jewish slogan or message. Whether doing so would increase participation in Jewish life itself, however, seems unlikely in the extreme.
Leslie Lenkowsky is professor of philanthropic studies and public affairs at Indiana University. He served as CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service from 2001 to 2003.
To Yamit,
First, I realize that your name is Yamit82, but I have simply presumed that your first name is Yamit and your last name is 82 and have taken the privilege of calling you by your first name. Let me know if I am wrong.
Counterfactual scenarios are all good until events play themselves out. As you know, European Jewry arose from about 10,000 individuals who themselves were under pressure in the Alsace-Lorraine vallies in the time of Rashi. Nonetheless, you are probably right. Nobody in America believes anything. Only those who are interested in physics have any chance of maintaining a rational faith. With the dumbing down of America, the rational basis of faith becomes less obvious. We can no longer depend upon strong cultural communities as a basis of survival, except in specific and rare cases.
In addition, American Jews capable enough of making sense of the universe for the rest of us will continue moving to Israel. It is our brain-drain. There is the possibility though that out Zion will come Torah. I am personally working on such an idea. Meanwhile, we must all be careful of creating self-fulfilling prophecies. The facts you bring to the table cannot be denied, but their interpretation and their consequences cannot be predicted. Most of Rome was once Jewish. Now, just today, the Italians have come to support the Jews and Israel in ways that the rest of Europe would not do. It is meager compensation for the decline of their authentic Jewish community, but it is not chopped liver either. Quite unexpected!
The only American Jews who will be left in two generations are the Orthodox. Reform and Conservative Judaism will disappear. Why? They can’t keep American Jews Jewish.
Sorry I lost you. When the American Jewish community in 2-3 more generations ceases to exist as a vital vibrant growing community, how do you come to the above conclusions. Where in the decennial census of 2000 had a 50% intermarriage rate today it’s over 70% and growing and the birthrate of Jews is also less. Any rational conclusion other than the one I posed above is self delusional. In addition the Jewish % of the general population is decreasing yearly and with it political influence. Only wealthy JINOS will have any impact and that will not involve Jews or Judaism as most are totally assimilated and divorced from all things Jewish.
Jews can either come here and maintain some form of Jewish identity or disappear into the general masses. Unless antisemitism doesn’t get out of control then all bets are off re: How much time it will take.
With Americas economy in the toilet ready to be flushed the Liberal Jews will be tagged as the culprits, anyway you view it there is a bleak future for Jews in America as there already is in Europe.
Seems like haShem has decided to end the exile and you can get with the program or not but if not? Look back to history for an answer.
That’s an anti-fungal foot salve, right?
Much too pessimistic! As Jews disappear into the mass of humanity, about 10 percent of those who intermarry find that their spouses desire greater attachment to Judaism. It is that group that tends to raise a Jewish family. In addition, the Orthodox and Orthoprax raise families above replacement, the Orthoprax less so. The only thing that keeps the Orthoprax population down is high tuition bills. If the European system were extant in America, Judaism would do more than flourish. Jewish schools in Europe are sought out by non-Jewish parents. Some of these will strengthen the position of the Jews, if not the population itself – through conversion.
The search for meaning – as far as I can tell in my limited intellectual capacity – can only be satisfied within Judaism, since a concept of an infinite God and a finite human capacity means a lifetime of search and study – which Judaism provides. In addition, the current style of rejection of history will itself be rejected in the future by anyone who has a modicum of curiosity.
History and future are tied together inextricably in the brain by the same processes. Indeed, when memory capacity wanes as we age, we fail as well to speculate about the future. Thus, only when the future does not matter, do humans lose their understanding of history – personal and group. In Judaism, history still matters. We comment on the essence of being human when we argue about the future based upon the past.
In short, the future of Judaism is quite bright unless all humanity destroys itself. In this regard, unfortunately, – not as a non-sequitur – I must mention here that the world has not been told the truth about the mega-disaster at Fukushima. Death and disability come quietly on cat’s paws.
Whereas I have full trust in every word those young liberal Jewish punks say about rejecting their Jewish heritage. I believe them 100%.
In contrast, I have no reason to trust any evangelical’s proclaimed versus actual motives and efforts when, unlike many people here, evangelicals don’t have to look up the simple root origin of the term “evangelical”.
Shy guy, I have far greater trust in the friendship of Evangelical Christians than young liberal Jewish punks who reject their Jewish heritage and help every other group they perceive as needy but not their own.
THE VANISHING AMERICAN JEW
American Jews — numbered at 5,200,000 strong in 2000 — constitute the second largest and the most influential Jewish community in the World. Yet, that figure hardly provides the objective observer with any insight as to the community’s future viability. To glimpse such an insight, one must examine those twin scourges of Jewish life — Love and Hate, more formally known as Assimilation and Antisemitism.
The United Jewish Communities’ “National Jewish Population Survey 2000” — a decennial demographic study — found that, due to a negative net birthrate (i.e., Jewish deaths exceeded Jewish births for that period), America’s Jewish population had declined by 300,000 souls from 1990 to 2000. This translates to an average net loss of 82 Jews per day for that decade. This is hardly surprising in light of the study’s finding that 70% of Jewish women in the United States between the ages of 25 and 29 were childless.
The study also discovered that, due to an ongoing intermarriage rate in excess of 50%, of all children under the age of 12 with Jewish parentage in the United States, less than half have two Jewish parents. Of the more than half with a gentile parent, (according to other surveys) only a quarter thereof will be raised as Jews. Of these, only a small minority will marry other Jews, as it will be almost impossible for an intermarried Jew, however sincere, to convince his or her child to do what he or she failed to do, namely: marry a fellow Jew.
However, Assimilation and a low birth rate are not the only problems facing the American Jewish community. In its June 2002 “Survey Of Antisemitism In America” the Anti-Defamation League found that one third of all Americans believe that Jews have “dual loyalties” (i.e., they are potentially treasonous) and that one fifth of all Americans believe that Jews have “too much power in the U.S. today” (i.e., they are potentially dangerous). Ironically, it was once perversely believed that the multiplicity of ethnic groups inhabiting America — constituting a plethora of inviting targets for the majority population’s hostility — would provide a bulwark against an obsessive hatred of American Jews. Instead, it seems that at least some of these immigrants simply brought their Jew-hatred with them, thereby finding at least some common ground with those Americans who had arrived before them.
The Message is clear. The American Exile will end, whether by Assimilation or Antisemitism — more likely, by a combination of both.
When the nation-state of Israel was resurrected in 1948, it was home to a mere 5% of World Jewry. Today, it constitutes the largest Jewish community in the World, and is home to 40% of World Jewry. And Israel’s Jewish community is the only one in the World with a positive net birthrate.
Due to ongoing terrorism and the enduring hostility of much of the World, Israel may not seem safe for the individual Jew. Yet, it is the only country in the World that is safe for the collective Jew.
Again, the Message is clear. If the Jewish people are to have a Future, it will only be found in Israel. American Jews can either be a part of that Future, or they can simply disappear.
At 5,200,000 strong, American Jewry will not vanish overnight. But its days are numbered!