Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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

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!

Abrams' unflinching clarity, wisdom, brilliance, responsibility, and calm are equally evident in his writing and in his eyes (see book jacket). His book, rich with meticulously documented references and chapters organized with the grace of rivers flowing into the sea, held me in thrall; it was over too soon! (We love to read someone else's case for our existing opinions.)

After my own vain efforts to bridge the rift between Right and Left, observant and downright anti-religious, I had recently concluded that the anti-religious Left is a branch best left to die. Abrams addresses my conclusion. Liberals ignore this book at their peril. My burning questions: (1) From a theological perspective, wouldn't a non-anti-Jewish Christianity cease to be Christianity at all?, and (2) What is it -- a yeshiva education? -- that creates a person so clear-sighted, unrelentingly logical, and pleasantly articulate as the author?

pk