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The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century

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Nineteen-ninety-one was an unusually bad year for American Jewry. It began with Saddam Hussein's bombing of Tel Aviv, aggravated by the occasional "No Blood for Israel" banner at antiwar rallies; in August, Crown Heights erupted in black-Jewish violence; a couple of weeks later, George Bush pleaded that he was just "one lonely little guy" fighting lobbyists for Israeli loan guarantees; in November, David Duke nearly won a Louisiana election. Alan Dershowitz's "Chutzpah" was just what Jews needed. It was an unapologetic call to arms, urging American Jews to be proud and assertive, to strike out firmly against anti-Semites and anti-Zionists. A few months after the book's summer 1991 publication, I spoke with Dershowitz. "I'm delighted," he said, "to be known more for my Jewish activism than for my defense of Claus von Bülow."

But for the last seven years, we've seen Dershowitz in a different context than Defender of the Jews. As a hired-gun appelate lawyer, he's moved on to clients every bit as upstanding as von Bülow: Mike Tyson, Leona Helmsley, O.J. Simpson. So the context for his new book, "The Vanishing American Jew," is quite different: Things aren't so bleak for American Jews in 1998, and Dershowitz is hardly Mr. Credibility. But frankly, if this volume were found chiseled into stone tablets on Mount Sinai, it would resonate little more. It's bloated, wildly unfocused and digressive, a repetitious jumble of ramblings that only infrequently tie into Dershowitz's thesis. The thesis itself-that, for Jewishness to survive without institutional enemies, the next generation needs a *positive* reason to stay Jewish-is hardly earthshaking, having been developed thoroughly in recent years by authors ranging from Los Angeles rabbi Michael Goldberg ("Why Should Jews Survive?") to the redoubtable Michael Lerner ("Jewish Renewal").

Like others, Dershowitz warns of "assimilation, intermarriage, and low birthrates" and locates a bright Jewish future in "the considerable, but largely untapped, strengths of ! our own heritage." But you'd be hard-pressed to locate that simple central point in much of "The Vanishing American Jew"-it's often buried under paragraphs and pages that will frustrate any reader picking up the book based on a misguided trust of the author. Since Dershowitz's editors clearly went too easy on his book, it falls to us to trim it from 370-plus pages to a more appropriate length.

First, some stylistic problems. To begin with, a good 35 pages are wasted on jokes cribbed from a variety of sources. You never have to wait many paragraphs before encountering, "It is also illustrated by the old joke that asks... I was recently told the following story about... I am reminded of the joke about... I end this chapter with a vignette that illustrates..." The jokes themselves (augmented by historical anecdotes and apocryphal stories) aren't bad, just trite, and nearly always irrelevant. Perhaps 10 pages are given over to self-aggrandizing "I was having lunch with" anecdotes about encounters and debates with U.S. and Israeli leaders. Those can go too. Self-evident, pointless rhetorical filler takes up 15 or so pages. "I am not prepared...to concede the end of the non-Orthodox American Jewish community, though I recognize the uphill battle we face," he writes.

Worse than pure filler are the empirically absurd overstatements that will make any reader stop dead in midpage: "Assimilation these days is so cost-free and easy that any Jew who does not want to belong to the Jewish people can resign with less hassle than it takes to get out of the Book-of-the-Month Club." And how about this: "[N]o group in America is less knowledgeable about its traditions, less literate in its language, less familiar with its own library than the Jews." Call it 10 pages. Out come all the egregious slaps at "foolish fundamentalists who find the answers to all of today's problems in the literal words of yesterday's texts." Figuring they won't be reading this book, Dershowitz goes so far as to call ultra-religious Jews "un-Jewish." At lea! st 10 pages. Taking out all the contradictory statements will knock out 15 pages or so. "While insisting that "We are supposed to be a light unto the world," 100 pages later-in an effort to not offend hard-hearted neoconservatives-he charges that Jews who claim that *tikkun olam* (to repair the world) is "the essence of Judaism" are "as wrong as those who claim that the essence of Judaism can be found in Newt Gingrich's Contract with America."

Now here's where we can really cut things down: Maybe 110 pages cover material that simply has nothing whatsoever to do with Dershowitz's thesis. Though, early on, he repeatedly hammers home that anti-Semitism no longer poses a serious threat, he stuffs the book's middle with dozens of impassioned pages on Holocaust denial, black anti-Semitism, Islamic fundamentalism and the Christian right. Not only has this all been covered thoroughly elsewhere, but Dershowitz doesn't even try to connect most of it to his goal of rescuing the Jewish people. And the detours don't end with his discussions of anti-Semitism. There's a discussion of "Is Judaism Messianic?" and a paean to the subject of argument. Don't miss his head-scratching endnote (unconnected, in my copy of the book, to any in-text reference) on the topic of college-campus date rape.

We're down to about 135 pages, not counting the heavily annotated endnotes, and we are entirely justified cutting this remainder by two-thirds, since Dershowitz repeats each of his points several times. So the book ends up the length of a sizable article. But I'll save you the trouble of reading *any* of it. Nearly 300 pages in, Dershowitz hits us with his solution, the salvation of American Jewry. Are you sitting down? Here it is: better Jewish day schools. Though he follows this blockbuster pronouncement with pleas for Judaism to become more open, for acceptance of intermarried couples and "doubting Jews," and for Jewish educators to become leaders, that's basically it. Dershowitz also recommends that Jews read Joseph Telushkin's ! wonderful "Jewish Literacy." I second that suggestion-and add one of my own: Buy the Telushkin volume with the money you'll save by *not* buying "The Vanishing American Jew.

This book is a reasonable and sincere attempt to deal with a difficult problem -- how to preserve Jewish culture in an era when the pace of Jews' assimilation into their home societies is accelerating.

Among its better points, it tries to grapple with defining the essence of what it is to be Jewish, especially if one is to be inclusive of secular and agnostic Jews such as Prof. Dershowitz himself. He shows that Judaism includes many principles and practices, but that many of these are either shared with other groups, or not practiced by some people who nonetheless consider themselves Jewish. So it's hard to say that the content of any of these principles or practices is the distinguishing content of Judaism. His discussion of this is very illuminating, I think.

Ultimately, he comes up with the distinction that the common essence of Judaism is procedural rather than substantive -- it is a *way* of dealing with changes and differing opinions, rather than a specific set of principles or doctrines (content). The distinction he attempts to draw is one familiar to lawyers, but perhaps less so to others, and might be a bit of a let-down to many.

Prof. Dershowitz also defends the principle that being Jewish should be a matter of self-identification. Along the way he points out the contradictions between, on the one hand, the ultra-Orthodox view that religious law has been fixed since the time of Moses, and, on the other, their position that a child's religion follows his or her mother's (opposite of what is set forth in the Old Testament). It isn't clear, however, whether his liberality would also apply to someone who neither had a Jewish parent nor went through a conversion procedure -- maybe someone should ask him.

It probably will be difficult for any reader, Jewish or not, to identify with all the issues he tries to deal with along the way to reaching this result. For example, I personally found his discussion of religious ceremonies for agnostics and atheists a bit mind-boggling. But while I don't fall into either of those categories, there are many people who do and who also consider themselves Jewish. For this reason, I understand why he'd discuss this and similar topics.

There are a couple of pertinent things he doesn't mention, especially when it comes to intermarriage. (I speak from the POV of a committed Jew married to a non-Jewish woman.) One is that many modern Jews are turned off by the exclusionary language that is found in many Jewish religious texts (written, for the most part, thousands of years ago or under circumstances of violent persecution by non-Jews). If you find it hard to believe that the Jewish G-d or supreme power is really different from that of a sincere Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, etc., it's harder to swallow the absolute necessity of marrying a Jewish person, especially when Jews make up less than 3% of the US population and less than 0.2% of the world's.

He also doesn't mention that it's possible to convert children to Judaism without necessitating the conversion of a non-Jewish parent. Sometimes the non-Jewish parent doesn't have the personal conviction to warrant a sincere conversion, but nonetheless strongly supports the idea that children should have an unequivocal identity as Jewish. (Maybe this is easier to do when that parent has a strong ethnic but weaker religious identity, as is common with many people from Japan, China and some other East Asian countries. Negotiating Jewish and Japanese identities within a family, for example, might be easier than negotiating simultaneous Jewish and Christian ones. Of course, there are some committed religionists in East Asia too.)

I've got to agree with the reviewers who mention Prof. Dershowitz's frequent self-aggrandizing comments as one of the truly irritating features of the book. From having heard him speak almost 30 years ago, I'd guess this is one of his more enduring traits (not that other trial lawyers are significantly more modest). His use of jokes bothered me less, though they mostly come from one source (Jewish Humor, by Joseph Telushkin, which relates many of them in an overly abbreviated, and therefore flat, manner). So if you know that book you'll have heard 'em all before.

But I disagree with reviewers who suggest that Prof. Dershowitz is racist or feels Jews are better than other people. I think that's a misinterpretation, though his self-aggrandizement doesn't help get his sincerity across. He's candid about his divided feelings about his son's intermarriage, but I think he recognizes that it's possible for a human being to have inconsistent or contradictory feelings inside themselves. I might not agree with him on every point, but think it's to his credit that he deals with the intermarriage issue from the standpoint of publicly examining his own personal ambivalence, rather than adopting some doctrinaire point of view (which he makes fun of later in the book).

For the most part, he's grappling with a very legitimate issue: As a tiny minority who find themselves in an open, hospitable home culture, there's a strong attraction for Jews to thoroughly assimilate into that home culture. Over the course of a few generations, such assimilation makes it easy to lose the distinctive culture from their past. Prof. Dershowitz feels that there's a lot of merit in the Jewish cultural heritage, at the same time that he's an enthusiastic supporter of the open society that creates this dilemma. My impression is that he'd like for Jews to participate fully in that society while also retaining something particularly Jewish.

I think that most ethnic groups in the US face similar issues about integration vs. identity, though there are some unique aspects that complicate Jews' attempts to accomplish this goal, just as other ethnicities have their own unique circumstances to deal with. In the case of Jews these issues include (i) blending of culture with a religious heritage that's different from US majority, and (ii) relative lack of distinguishing physical or linguistic characteristics. I think his book is a sincere attempt to help a Jewish audience deal with this difficult conundrum.

This book is to be commended for recognizing a real problem. The American - Jewish community is declining in numbers. It is an aging community, one with high- rates of intermarriage, and low rates of fertility. It is a community which is an increasingly small percentage of American society as a whole.
Why is this important?
I think that there are two answers, one for Jews and another for American non- Jews.
Jewish communities have thrived in various places in the world, and then disappeared. The American Jewry community is an especially important one for the Jewish people historically especially in its relation to Israel and the Jewish people as a whole.
As for the second reason, I would maintain that for general American society the survival and thriving of an American- Jewish community is important because this community has made great contributions to American life in many different areas, and as on the whole been a great creative factor in the shaping of American civilization.
In considering the situation of American Jews it is necessary to understand that the challenges and character of American life are different from those that the Jews have known elsewhere. Only in America have Jews been given a kind of access and acceptance which in our own time means that there is virtually no discrimination against them. It is because America accepts the Jews, and adopts so much of what is Jewish as part of itself that assimilation happens so readily in the United States.
Clearly to preserve its own tradition and way the Jews of America have to ( This is Dershowitz's major recommendation) greatly increase the quality and quantity of Jewish education. Sadly most American Jews are very ignorant about their own traditions. And one encouraging element in American - Jewish life is the intense return to Jewish learning by a certain minority of the population.
Clearly learning to understand what the Jewish community and its history is , is central to preserving Jewish identity.
Another point. Since the publication of Dershowitz's book there has been a dramatic increase in world-wide anti-Semitism. This often takes the form of Anti- Zionism and is directed primarily against Israel.
American Jews have in the past played an important role in helping support the survival of Israel. Though support for Israel among the broad American public is relatively stable over the past forty years, and though there is massive Christian Evangelical support for Israel there is also now in the US a strong anti- Semitic, anti- Israel movement which combines Islamic fundamentalists, Palestinian Arab nationalists, those of the extreme right, and perhaps even more alarmingly , extreme left, politically.
A strong American Jewish community is an important element in ensuring an Israel which can survive in the future.
In this regard one additional element in strengthening Jewish young people's identity as Jews is through their traveling to and knowing Israel. The special 'Birthright' programs have attempted to do some of this.
Dershowitz surveys the problem, and shows his heart is in the right place.
His book is in this sense highly recommended. It should be supplemented however by the works of Jack Wertheimer, Sylvia Barack- Fishman, and others who consider this problem.

The author, accurate in his identification of the problems of Jewish assimilation, none the less cannot come to an answer that will in fact keep the Jews from vanishing.

Secular Judaism, cultural Judaism, and any other form that does not require adherance to halacha and Torah values, cannot survive. The book sounded like a justification for the fact that Dershowitz, coming from an Orthodox background, had a son that married out of faith.

I am sure that this fact alone, how it happened and how it could have been prevented, had a substantial influence on his writing. Though I share his pain and his concern for future generations, his solutions, other than Jewish education, are not sufficient. Education will hopefully attract the disenfranchised and other non Orthodox Jews to finding their roots and returning to basic Jewish law. That will keep the Jewish nation from vanishing.

Dershowitz conveys a genuine worry that Jewish people will lose their identity in the years to come. He is concerned about Jewishness getting lost in the struggle and furiousness of America. He says time and again in the book that the Jewish people need something to fight against to be great. He did not totally convince me of this. I think there are great Jewish doctors, professors, businessmen and women. Intellectual and business prowess. Isn't that something to be proud of?

I also wish that Dershowitz would have included more examples, perhaps little vignettes of various Jewish people and how they struggle in the world, or perhaps how they try to retain their identity in a fast-paced, sometimes fickle world. This would have been a good direction to take.

On the whole a very interesting topic for a book. Thank you for writing the book Dr. Dershowitz.

I agree with Mr. Dershowitz that education is the ideal solution to the "Vanishing World Jew" problem, buth how will we be able to involve the great majority who is not interested in reading, attending conferences or think about certain profound questions. The majority of people are conformists, they are only in search of professional, social or economic successes. There are those who also do not want to know because they feel unconfortable to face their Jewishness, so they hide behind the thought that we are all the same and that G-d is universal. It would be wonderful to find a way to make "being Jewish" fashionable. How to do it is the big question.

Book Review: The Vanishing American Jew

By: Alan M. Dershowitz
Review By: Joshua W. Delano



Alan M. Dershowitz uses his keen intellect to delve into the issue of The Vanishing American Jew with the same vigor and attentiveness he has applied to his storied criminal defense practice. Dershowitz makes a case that the prominent threat no longer lays within institutional anti-Semitism in America. Instead, he points out the threat to Jews and their way of life by assimilation. No longer do the Jews have to be united against a common enemy such as the Nazism of the Holocaust generation or Government sanctioned anti-Semitism. Intermarriage to non-Jews and assimilation into American society is now the primary danger to a people who've survived through so much persecution and toil.
Some 50 percent of Jews will marry non-Jews, and their children will most often be raised as non-Jews. In Dershowitz's view, the Jewish people will vanish from the planet sometime in the next hundred or so years. The threats to Jews are no longer external by his account. No longer are Jews in danger from the genocidal acts of Hitler or those fringe groups of present day whose threats Dershowitz discounts as marginal. Now Jews are threatened by themselves and the fact that as a people they've accomplished the American dream, becoming assimilated into the mainstream of this country.
Likely, there is no better person to take on this subject with a unique perspective both of Jewish religion and custom, as well as legal and political activism. Dershowitz has become an institution as well as a magnet to many young legal minds who aspire to greatness by choosing Harvard Law School, where he has enjoyed a successful tenure.
While dissecting the situation, the author elaborates on points such as Neo-Nazi whites and Nation of Islam anti-Semites uniting in lockstep against the Jews of present day. These threats are what he labels, as marginal and nothing compared to what Jews have faced in the past. He points out when he speaks to older Jewish audiences, he is often, "accused sometimes stridently, of minimizing anti-Semitism and am told that it is worse than ever." They see the glass as not half-full or half-empty, but instead as cracked and unfixable. A sentiment he says is in contrast with the reality of acceptance and notes that Jews are more so a part of mainstream America today than ever before. The author points out that the older generation's identities are so tied up with their victimization, they are incapable of accepting the good news that the situation is improving.
In comparison, a 1988 poll of Jewish students at Dartmouth College poignantly notes: When asked whether they believed that their Jewish ness would in any way hamper their future success, not a single student answered in the affirmative. Dershowitz considers this the current reality.
Whereas, the threat from black or Aryan neo-Nazi types is marginal, Dershowitz explains that the greater threat is that of the Christian right. Many Jews that convert to Christianity are not doing so per se, but actually converting to the American mainstream. At the present time Conservative Jews and Christians are uniting for many political causes and moving along at proficient level in policy and coalition building.
Though the author views this as a threat, it is hard for me to see it as anything other than the greater good. While Dershowitz calls it assimilation and a threat to group identity, I do not see it so cynical. Perhaps he has the wisdom and advantage of his years to have built upon his cynicism, but I see it in an ideally good way. Unity is a good thing, is it not? He refers to it as assimilation and a threat to the Jewish people and religion, I see it as all of God's people coming together for what is right, good, and just.
Mr. Dershowitz points out that his own son married a Catholic young lady, causing some unrest with his mother. He was happy, and is now with the outcome, although bothered in some ways internally. Though, Dershowitz's mother was a harder sell, requiring the consult of a Rabbi to find out why her grandson was "doing this to me." In the end all was well and Dershowitz lists some ways of handling these situations for Jews whose children intermarry. He urges that Jewish parents should be supportive, loving, and inclusive of the new spouse. Likewise, as in the case of his son, he recommended being positive and inclusive in the celebration of their Jewish identity.
This is what Dershowitz emphasizes as an essential aspect of maintaining Jewish identity and Jews as a people in America. Emphasizing the positive aspects of Judaism rather than always being so clannish and cynical. Numerous times however, Mr. Dershowitz uses humor in his book to emphasize the perceptions and misperceptions both of Jews as well as the anti-Semitic world view of those who are not Jewish. In his analysis, Dershowitz opines, "Judaism must become less tribal, less ethnocentric, less exclusive, less closed off, less defensive, less xenophobic, less clannish. We jokingly call ourselves "members of the tribe" (MOTs), as if to remind us of our tribal origins. Tribalism may be easy to justify when others treat us as a tribe, as they long have. But it becomes anachronistic and antagonistic - to behave like a tribe when others treat us like part of the mainstream."
In some aspects of the text, Mr. Dershowitz lists the sentiments of many Jews which the reader may confuse as the author's. As a seasoned defense attorney, he is always the epitome of a devil's advocate. In The Vanishing American Jew, Dershowitz weaves facts, perceptions, misperceptions, and myth as he makes his case for which modus operandi should be utilized to preserve Jewish identity in America. Jokingly, Dershowitz mentions that most Jews want their children to: be Jewish but not too Jewish, want their children to be observant of High Holidays, but not too observant, want their children to pray, but not too much.
One point I'd agree with Dershowitz on undoubtedly would be that there has to be a balance. He concedes that Jews must maintain their culture and religion without being clannish. Also, that Jews should assimilate into mainstream America to the extent that they should still be observant of their identity as Jews. Likewise that Jews of the present and in the future should maintain the religious connection passing on the Jewish culture and customs to future generations.
Mr. Dershowitz does a great job of weighing all perspectives and getting down to the problem at hand. The laborious analysis and supporting argument for maintaining and prolonging Jews into further generations gives the reader a sturdy foundation with which to come to a conclusion. While looking to the future, Dershowitz recalls from his own past as well as historical input to show that Jews must not forget who they are, where they've come from, and where Jews as a people are headed.
This issue in my eyes of course will be slanted by my being both a Gentile and a Christian, albeit a Monotheistic one. I view Judaism and the Jews as God's chosen people and the need for their survival as a people is very important. In the book Dershowitz uses historical analysis and Judaism as a religion as his vehicle for convincing the reader of his cause and his case. At the same time, he takes a more intellectual and humanistic approach as to the reasoning behind his argument, only supplementing it with the religious aspect to appeal to all Jews in the Orthodox to Reform-liberal strata.
It is obvious he believes in the importance of maintaining the religious aspects but seemingly he puts too much of a humanistic focus on the crisis to suit my palate. If God has seen Jews through all these years, why can Dershowitz not trust in God that He will see them through until the coming of the Messiah? I of course have faith that God will see Jews through because they are His people and they shall not depart from the earth as a people as Dershowitz predicts.
Dershowitz makes a great case and if you are thinking along humanistic terms and don't have any faith in God then this book is great. However this is the main shortcoming in that God is still all those things that we've attributed to him including, omnipotent. While Mr. Dershowitz's perspective isn't altogether wrong from my vantage, he doesn't see with the same eyes as I do, or from the same heart. I enjoyed his refreshing outlook on what he says is an over hyped threat of anti-Semitism in our day and time. Though it exists, I, as the author also feels, see this as something that has been much blown out of proportion. In our society there always remains a fragment of the population who will be oversensitive and read into things and see that which isn't there. Always, will there be among us those who are ignorant, bigoted, and uneducated.
On the other hand, as time passes not only can you describe societal norms being that of tolerance and acceptance but of that of unity and brotherhood to some extent. People will always be self interested and those who hate or are uninformed to the point of bigoted stupidity will eventually become marginalized over time. Jews and Christians as well as all races will, as I feel we are for the most part now, come together in consensus on many subjects and sentiments. This is why politics in America has had to become inherently centrist, since extremes exist but those moderate among us make this country work. America is a progressive country, which Dershowitz points out has been the most congenial to Jews, more so than any other host country in the past.
America was founded upon much bloodshed and treachery, even racism, though the positive attributes reflect the good of this country which has for so long welcomed so many to this country. The most important attribute to me and to Jews, as well as all people is not some PC baloney of this socialistic enlightenment period we live in but the saying engraved on our currency, "E pluribus Unum." While all of this sounds over idealistic and patriotic, I'm just pointing out that all thing work together for the good. God watches out for the Jews, in my opinion primarily, as they are His people, His children. I see myself as adopted and glad to be so by His grace and mercy. All of this is said not to preach or get theological, but to show my opinion of this case made in the book, that Dershowitz is well-intentioned and even correct on what he suggests to solve this problem. However, it is my thought, although I've been told that Jewish people, "don't do faith," as one good Rabbi friend of mine told me, that God is still the God who parted the Red Sea, helped Joshua, Daniel, David, and Job in their time of need. All I might add to victory. God will still see the tribe of the Lion of Judah through to the end.

While I could write a great deal about this important, and (I hope) influential book, and I don't agree with all of Mr. Dershowitz's conclusions and proposed solutions, the most meaningful thing I can say about it is that it has energized ME, a 46-year old lifelong secular Jew, to try to fulfill my long-held dream to organize Fringe Jews (unaffiliated Jews, alienated Jews, fractional Jews, Gentiles related to Jews, etc.) so that we can all together find ways to feel connected, and to connect our children, to the Jewish world, without being made to feel bad about not being religious, and to have the Chutzpah (to borrow Dershowitz's theme from his earlier book) to assert our right to a place at the table of 21st Century Jewish culture and civilization, but also the sense of responsibility to get whatever version of Jewish literacy we believe we need, and to give it to our kids. Thank you, Mr. Dershowitz!

A well-written easy-to-read book that right on the mark as it tackles one of the most difficult problems in contemporary judaism. As with all of Dershowitz' books, this one is filled with humor, meticulously researched and contains compelling arguments in support of his view that organized judaism is failing to provide the proper educational foundation to ensure the continuation of reform and conservative judaism in the USA.

Even if you, like me, do not share Mr. Dershowitz' orthodox background or left-wing politics, don't let that deter you from reading this excellent book.

Dershowitz's work is vital and important for all American Jews. In my own lifetime, I have witnessed the development of a demographic crisis within our community. Indeed, the situation is no better than when Prof. Dershowitz published these prophetic words.

At the present time, it is possible to appreciate the factors which have contributed to the vanishing of American Jews. Dershowitz fails to emphasize the role of the single-minded pursuit of laurels and professional advancement in creating our current situation. So much has been sacrificed to achieving the goals of wealth, fame, and influence. Within my own family I have observed how the avid use of birth control as a means to enabling professional success has diminished our numbers. Moreover, Judaism is not a proselytizing religion. Our traditions are perpetuated only to the extent that we are able to reproduce. The widely-held perception (not unjustifiably) of the Jews as being greedy, dishonest, and obnoxious has not helped to recruit converts to our numbers. It is no small irony that Prof. Dershowitz writes these words from his perch at Harvard University, whose Jewish population better exemplifies these stereotypes than any I have encountered, particularly with their espousal of liberal causes and their competitive zeal.

We do well, then, to question what the long-term outlook is for secular Jews in America. My own sense is that the height of our influence over American culture is at its apex. The inexorable decline that will follow in the coming decades will be welcomed by many, particularly those who rightly perceive the Jews as the prime motivators of the legal and cultural assault on traditional Christian values (of which there is no better example than Prof. Dershowitz himself). The essay by E. Michael Jones on "The Apology in Context" is a superb explication of this view.