This article is reprinted with permission of the New Jersey Jewish News. Visit www.NJJewishNews.com.
My favorite bit of press spin comes via basketball great Charles Barkley, who claims that he was misquoted--in his autobiography. "That was my fault," he told an interviewer. "I should have read it before it came out."
I felt a little bit like Barkley when I received a letter from Paul Golin, assistant director of the Jewish Outreach Institute, objecting to a column I wrote two weeks ago on Jewish continuity. (Golin's letter ran in last week's NJJN.) I wrote that a Jewish newspaper, like any Jewish institution, must decide whether it wants to focus on "outreach" to Jews who are not particularly active in Jewish life, or on "inreach" to "core" Jews who are more likely to make involved Jewish choices. These include regularly attending synagogue, sending children to Jewish schools, and, ultimately, marrying other Jews.
In the end, I waffled, but Golin still called me out. "The debate about outreach 'vs.' inreach is over in the minds of most Jewish communal professionals; the question now is simply what kind of outreach," he wrote. "Only serving the 'core' (i.e., ourselves) is a strategy that is doomed to failure, and one that we consider fundamentally un-Jewish in approach."
I don't think I came down on the side of serving only the "core." But I suppose my ambivalence made it appear that I was on the side of the "inreachers," who would divert most Jewish energies and communal resources to "core" Jews (and Golin is right that I quoted a few "inreachers" without acknowledging those who have criticized their biases and numbers).
But I can't agree that the debate about inreach vs. outreach is "over." I don't think Golin quite believes it either. His organization promotes efforts to include the intermarried in the Jewish community, and wouldn't be necessary if such efforts were fully embraced by that community. True, a growing number of federations, including MetroWest, support such efforts, which are predicated on the belief that engaging the intermarried can be a net gain for the Jewish community, and not the demographic disaster that the "inreachers" are predicting. But advocacy organizations like JOI and InterfaithFamily.com exist because there are many who disagree with their basic premise.
No doubt the inreachers have their biases, but much of what they are saying seems self-evident. Golin accuses me of being nostalgic for "shtetl life" when I suggested that Jews who live in close proximity to other Jews are more likely to inmarry. J-date notwithstanding, can anyone doubt that you have a better chance of meeting a Jewish mate in New York than you do in Nebraska? And if I waffled two weeks ago, I'll say it clearly now: My gut tells me that by sending our kids to Jewish day school and making synagogue and kashrut a regular part of our family life, I have a better chance of having Jewish grandkids than were we to go a more secular route. It's not foolproof, but I am playing the odds.
Where I agree with Golin is that this paper and all Jewish institutions have to continue to be gateways for those who are not--and may never be--ready for the kinds of intensive choices I've made. The Jewish community needs to cherish the individuals who are devising new ways of being Jewish beyond the "core." They range from the serious--like the proponents of "eco-kashrut" who suggest our religious laws must be in synch with the needs of a sustainable environment--to the nutty, like Madonna and her fellow dabblers in Kabala. First, they seem to be having a lot of fun. Second, they offer new models of engagement that often get absorbed into the "core," the way healing services, social action, and yes, even Kabala have made their way into mainstream synagogues.
Third, they are a laboratory for the kinds of behaviors and approaches that may be necessary when times change and demand an entirely new way for Jews to survive and flourish. After all, if the 20th century taught us anything, it is that you never know which strategy--from labor organizing to secular Zionism to federated giving--will ensure Jewish "continuity."
At the same time, I find myself agreeing with the demographers who say that on a communal level, at this moment in history, the choice that made the Jews so influential in the general culture in the 20th century--full assimilation into American society--is less effective in ensuring the continuity of distinctly Jewish families, institutions, and neighborhoods. And there is no substitute for family, institutions, and neighborhoods for preserving a distinct culture.
What's happening, I think, is that "inreachers" and "outreachers" are approaching Jewish life using two different models.
For "inreachers" it is a public health model. Their approach tends to be "population-based," and shifts the focus away from the individual. The emphasis is on prevention, and encouraging the behaviors that will promote health in a community-wide context.
What troubles "outreachers"--besides the question of who gets to define what "healthy" means in a Jewish context--is what critics of the public health model call "deficit-oriented approaches," or, more colloquially, blaming the victim. It's the pain felt by the synagogue member who is meant to feel inadequate because she drives to shul or sends her children to public school. It's the frustration of the business leader who's told he has no business commenting on Israel because he lacks "standing" in the Jewish world. It's what Ed Case of InterFaithfamily.com means when he writes, "Given negative leadership attitudes towards intermarriage, it isn't surprising that intermarried Jews have relatively infrequently joined Jewish institutions, engaged in Jewish learning, or practiced Jewish ritual."
Perhaps it is too early to say that, given our vast communal wealth and creativity, a choice must be made between "inreach" and "outreach." Still, there are tensions between the two approaches, and inevitably there are hard choices to be made--about schooling, about funding, about saying who's in and who's out. The key is to seek what's best for the community as a whole, while remaining sensitive to the feelings and needs of individuals.
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