https://aish.com/the-greatest-threat-facing-the-jewish-people-isnt-antisemitism/
There is a threat far more pernicious than antisemitism, one that is causing greater damage to our people at a faster pace than any external enemy ever could. It's called assimilation.
It's harder to assimilate when there's antisemitism.
ReplyDeleteAlthough it's true that it's not the same level hate as during the 1930s.
Years ago someone got in trouble (no, not me) for blogging that once upon a time there were 6 million Jews in the US and today (when he blogged it) when you removed all the non-Orthodox converts, Jews-by-choice, etc and patrilineals, there were only 4 million (he never did divulge his source though). That meant that assimilation had wiped out 1/3 of America's Jews, the same fraction as the Holocaust to world Jewry but without any gas chambers. He might've exaggerated the numbers but his point was sound. Assimilation can wipe us out just as easily.
DeleteIt's still a dumb argument.
DeleteHas anyone ever calculated how many people assimilated before the shoah? Or in soviet union?
One of the reasons that the RZ rabbis did giur k'halacha was to head off the risk of assimilation with the soviet olim who have a large number of non Jews according to halacha.
There are risks and there are risks.
The difference is that in the USSR and the Shoah, hiding your Jewishness was pikuach nefesh. In America, it's about convenience.
DeleteMany founders of the USSR were such Jews.
DeleteIt's not pikuach nefesh. Maybe shmad maybe not. Freedom to intermarry in Europe was largely due to the emancipation
Actually you'd think it would be easier to assimilate when there's anti-Semitism. It says something about our ancestors that for centuries they lived under Chrisian and Muslim oppression and had an easy way out - convert. The way was always open and yet very few did except at certain specific times like the expulsion from Spain.
ReplyDeleteThe article is correct though. This is why Kraft buying a Superbowl ad portraying Jews as weaklings who need a sympathetic tall Gentile to protect them was such a waste of money, as was that billion dollar donation to Einstein Medical school. The money should've been donated to every day school the donors could find to reduce tuition and improve teachers' salaries, thus making quality Jewish education more accessible.
It just reminds me of something the former rabbi of my community used to complain about. Go to someone for a donation for a Holocaust memorial? Sure rabbi! How much do you want? Go for a donation to build a Jewish day school or help fund it? Really rabbi? Why shouldn't our kids go to public school and just go to Talmud Torah in the afternoons? Why be so parochial?