Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America [Hardcover]

Elliott Abrams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 4, 1997

In the midst of the greatest religious expansion in American history, Jews are a shrinking minority. Intermarriage is up, synagogue attendance is down, and Jewish education is flagging. Jewish leaders spend less time instructing the young in religious traditions than in promoting liberal causes and attacking conservative Christians. But as Elliott Abrams contends in this tightly argued, insightful polemic, it is not the Christian Right that most threatens Jews today, but rather their abandonment of Judaism. From the New Deal to the present day, the politics of the Jewish majority have been increasingly both liberal and secular. This deep-seated inclination reflects the decision of 18th-century Jews to embrace an absolutist view of church-state separation - a sensible choice at a time of extreme Jewish vulnerability in a hostile Christian society. Yet paradoxically, the Jewish commitment to secular liberal values has itself become the greatest threat to Jewish continuity. Rather than attacking Christian fundamentalists, Abrams argues, Jews should follow their example. Indeed, conservative Christians are the natural allies of Jews, not their adversaries. Abrams documents how many conservative Christian leaders have swept anti-Semitism out of their churches, replacing it very often with strong pro-Israel and philo-Semitic stances, and shows how Jewish interests are more consistent with those of other people of faith than with secular liberals who want to drive religion out of public life completely. Abrams calls on American Jews to renounce their outmoded fear of Christians and their misguided faith in a liberalism that no longer serves to promote Jewish survival. Only through a genuinerenewal of religious belief, he maintains, will today's American Jews be able to pass their identity on to a new generation.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Jewish population in the United States may shrink by two million people in the next half-century. This demographic likelihood--well known in Jewish circles and due almost entirely to intermarriage--creates a dilemma for group survival. A big part of the problem, writes Elliott Abrams, has been the secularization of Jewish life. Abrams uncovers data showing that Jews are among the least religious people in America. Many have made a tragic mistake in equating Jewish security with removing all forms of religious devotion from public life. And now, says Abrams, they must either rediscover the faith that can sustain them or risk vanishing into the great American melting pot. Provocative, but persuasive, this highly readable book deserves a wide audience.

From Library Journal

Neoconservative writer Abrams (Security and Sacrifice, Hudson Inst., 1995), who had a controversial career in politics as a former assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration, is now the director of a Washington, D.C., think tank. Like Alan Dershowitz in his The Vanishing American Jew (LJ 3/1/97), Abrams is concerned with the loss of Jewish identity in an attractive, amorphous American culture. While both seek a revitalization of the Jewish spirit, Dershowitz sees belief in a deity as just a part of Jewish cultural renewal; Abrams believes that the only way for Jews to survive is by renewed religious faith. Dershowitz scorns the Orthodox methods of separateness, while Abrams believes Jews should emulate some of them. Abrams also argues for the benefits of a school voucher plan and heeding the influence of evangelical Christian groups. Libraries that ordered the Dershowitz tome may want to buy this one for comparison and contrast. Recommended for libraries serving a Jewish clientele.?Paul M. Kaplan, Lake Villa Dist. Library, Ill.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (June 4, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684825112
• ISBN-13: 978-0684825113
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #670,305 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-written addressing of a difficult issue, October 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America (Paperback)

Despite 3000 years of history, Jews still argue over who is a Jew. Abrams addresses a lot of the issues surrounding this: Judaism as a religion vs. as a culture, intermarriage, et al. He also addresses how these ideas apply to American history, culture, and politics. To his credit, he states his biases up front, but he also does a good job backing up his assertions with surveys and anecdotes that, at least for me, resonated.

The book is well-written and an easy read, which is a compliment for a book with an academic tone. Abrams' analysis of the generational patterns of American Jews maintaining or losing their Jewish identity are quite right, and a must read for any Jew who wants Jewish grandchildren. Some of Abrams' arguments were less convincing.

Whatever your reaction to the book, the discussion will never end. (Insert your favorite Jewish mother or Jewish guilt joke here). This book represents a productive contribution to that discussion, and as such I recommend it to anyone who is concerned with personal or societal Jewish identity.

7 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Abrams behaves as his Khazar ancestors did in Germany in 1916, January 14, 2010

By 

HistoryBuff "Charles" (North Pole) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America (Paperback)

This man is a Zionist who was supposed to be an independent voice in the Middle East under Bush - same as Dennis Ross with Clinton, also a Zionist. Twenty five years ago, Irving Kristol - the creator of NeoConservatism and William's father - said in the Wall Street Journal that Jews had never had it so good as they do in the United States - with the possible exception of Germany, prior to their betrayal, when the Khazar descendants wanted to grab Palestine in 1916 and from one day to the next, stopped supporting Germany and lied to get the US on the war on the side of England.
Kristol said that never in any Fascist or dictatorial country, including Soviet Russia, had Jews been given the opportunities they had been given in America, where they had been free to pursue their interests and become wealthy on the average without religious impediments. He begged the Jews who were influential in the media, Hollywood, and the professions to stop trying ti Judaize America - to leave it as Christian as it had been traditionally, for only then could Jews be assured of a long permanence here - if that were what they wished.
Today, AIPAC can produce a letter to the president, signed by as many as 85 US senators, telling the president whom we elected, not to try to pressure Israel to seek peace with the Palestinians, whose land has been robbed one inch at a time until they have almost nothing left. The president - all presidents since Eisenhower - then will have his hands tied and will have to follow Israel's dictates, to lend credence to Ariel Sharon's aphorism: "Jews are in charge in the United States".

The hypocrisy of Eliott Abrams is typical of his type - who claims to have a hard time surviving "whole" religiously in America, when by Judaism's own reckoning - including many rabbis on TV - so very few of those claiming their faith even believe in G-d. Kristol says in his book
"NeoConservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea" that in the Eighteenth Century the Jews discovered there was no G-d.

Wouldn't a safer way to survive, not be going back to "his" country Israel and leaving us callous, insensitive Americans to remain Christians without Hollywood and the rest of your help?
It has always been the Jewish choice and no one else's.
Charles

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Having a Jewish Identity crisis? Answer: GET RELIGION!, February 19, 2005

By 

Zeeskyte - See all my reviews

This review is from: Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America (Paperback)

If anyone hadn't heard his name before, just a reminder, this author was the Assistant Secretary of State during the Reagan era. His book these reads like a report on Jewish life in illreverant America. While his argument on the state of Jewish idenity is well defended, (ie, like minimizing the religious aspect of the Jewish idenity and having major jewish organizations not supporting the religiously observant publically has lead to a loss of jewish poeple #s, etc.) it has some obvious flaws.

For example, he says that today's role of the Christian right and anti-semetism has been overexagerrated and feared by Jews. Great strides in the Christian-Jewish dialigoe has minimize hate teaching and proselytizing of jews by christian organizations. There is a great acceptance of Jews as senators,etc and other community leadership roles. And true, fundamentalists and evangetical organizations are no longer targeting jews per se and actually support Israel. But what is ignored is that they no longer have to directly. Why there are separate organizations that allow jews to do it to themselves. They are called Jews for Jesus and Messianic synagogues! There are over 100 messianic synagogues in Israel alone! Why no mention in the book? These outreach efforts are funded by the very evangetical organizations jews should not fear in allowing support to their religious political/educational agendas - in exchange of orthodox jewish ones.

Another example that struck me a bit off is the "abandonment" of the outreach to jews of mixed ethnic origins ("half" and "quarter" jews). Granted he does not say this directly, but he suggests money being more well spent in educating the remaining full jews from marrying outside the faith completely, regardless of a spousal conversion. To me this would be like jewish suicide, in denying the rest of the jewish population how they choose to idenify themselves as jews. If anything, jews of mixed ethnic or faith backgrounds need a special kind of sensitivity otherwise, they will deny their 'jewish self' all the more easily.

Lastly, there are divisions in the Jewish community on Israel due to their inability to create a peaceful solution with their neighbors, the Palestinians. Flag waving at the synagogues only help so much. The issue is not properly dealt with in this book which gives Abrams' book a false sense of authenticity.

Of course I recognize the problems Jews faced today. As a convert who has jewish relatives both though my step-father and now a jewish husband, I wonder how did I ever get into this mess! The jewish people have conflicts within their faith as well as outside of it, quite unique from say Irish or Italian american intermarriage to the protestants (though his comparisons to those groups are interesting). Identification with ourselves as a group must be more liberal that of the original torah. In this sense 'jewish survival' will depend more on the oral tradition of reinterpreting the original precepts of the jewish faith rather than the narrow view of jewish identification which he sees as the only way for Jews to exist as fully jews. And NO it does not mean that a Christmas tree needs to be put in a lobby of the Reform synagogue as he insinuates! Geez!