Book Review: The Vanishing American Jew
Alan Dershowitz 
2/5 stars
"Interesting thought process, but history has proven him wrong"
*******

I picked up this book because I knew that it was written a couple of decades ago, and I wanted to see how well it stood the test of time.

Dershowitz says (in probably more words than necessary) that the pull of assimilation is something that was only *slowed down* by the events surrounding the Second World War and now that Jewish people feel safe again...... They're slipping off in large numbers as they always have been. (Sociologist Samuel Heilman has observed that unaffiliated Jews are the fastest growing number. Even faster than Black Hats.)

He suggests that the strength of Judaism in the past was because they were focused on survival and had very easy enemies to keep them together (and hatred is a unifying emotion). 

But now that that time of pogroms and imminent danger is past, can Jewish people find a way to keep interest in Judaism that is defined positively instead of being defined negatively?

Here Dershowitz offers 6 solutions:

Suggestion 1. Become less tribal and ethnocentric, and welcome converts.

Suggestion 2. Adopt a different approach to the increasing reality of intermarriage.

Suggestion 3. Recognize the validity of secular Judaism.

Suggestion 4. Jewish educators should find ways to make Judaism more interesting and attractive to Jewish people. (And this is a way to leverage the Jewish comparative advantage as Men of Words.)

Suggestion 5. There should be Jewish schools that are open to everyone. (In much the same way that Harvard started out as a religious school and became something else.)

Suggestion 6. A new type of curriculum needs to be developed, somewhere midway between Orthodox and Reform. I think he uses the word "low fat Judaism." (p.334).

How has this worked out for him?  

I will cut to the chase and tell you that: ALL bets are off for ALL of his suggestions.

In present times (and these are just the answers to his concluding six suggestions):

1. Not only have Jews become less welcoming to converts, but the conversion practices have become more abusive than they have ever been in history (I'm willing to bet you that the number of people caught copulating/ trying to copulate with their conversion candidates just in the last 20 years is greater than in the last 2000). 

Categorical invalidation of conversions has become a regular thing, and all conversions can be assumed to only exist in some indeterminate state at the pleasure of Some Big Enough Rabbi who wants to use them as a bargaining chip / tool to make a point.

2. Reform is the same as it always has been in that they accept intermarriage. In the time since this book has been written, Conservative has gone almost all the way to extinction. (And unaffiliated/secular Jews have had a population explosion. Reform has been gaining a few people.)

3. Secular Judaism is having problems even in the State of Israel because Neanderthal Haredim have voting power in such a way as to cause a lot of problems for Everyone
Else. (Governments in Israel are lasting for a year at a time these days, and it's only going to get worse.)

4. Not even close to being close. There are more people sitting around in Kollel for longer periods of time than there ever have been in history

All of these young men sitting around polishing seats would never deign to do outreach work. (Or, really, anything that could even be vaguely construed as work. Such as washing dishes or opening a window.)

And who knows what difference it would make, since: The kiruv/ outreach movement is dead. (2,000 people come in per year through all efforts, which is a small fraction of the number of people who leave.)

And these Kollel Penguins are some PROFOUNDLY ignorant people about anything outside of Gemara. (I would charitably say that the average level of literacy in "English" for them is probably about 7th or 8th grade. Recently, the state of New York gave a test to 1,000 students from Orthodox schools that were suspected to be failing to meet standards, and Every. Single. Student. failed the exam.)

5. Nope. Not only that, but schools are going further in the direction of being exclusive. (People are getting really stupid with the reference requirements, etc.)

6. Nope. Just, no. 

Other thoughts:

1. Not only have Jewish people not found a positive way to keep things going, but some have actually doubled down on a negative references--even to the point of manufacturing internal enemies of all sorts: The religion of Haredism has run off the rails in the United States (and Israel). 

Incessant bickering about conversion, and kosher certification, prayer at the Wailing Wall  And really anything else you can think about.

2. Modern/Open Orthodoxy (and that is approximately the choice that Dershowitz describes) is a diminished minor fraction of the Orthodox world (and the Orthodox World itself is still a minor fraction of all Judaism, birth rates notwithstanding) has a substantial attrition rate.

3. I wonder what does it mean to "keep Judaism alive."

It's not like we're only talking about one thing here.

∆∆If Maimonides rolled out of his grave this very day and walked into a Chabad house and met a couple of Meshichists, he would probably die a second time.  And if that wasn't enough to kill him, then he could just walk into any Hasidic place and hear a couple of guys holding forth about dybbuks.

∆∆If the Vilna Gaon rolled out and found out that Hasidim and Mitnagdim were just about equal numbers and went to each other's shuls and referred to each other's rabbis...... he would roll right back in.

4. 

Q:What has Dershowitz failed to understand?

A: Things that only a lawyer could misunderstand but of which no decent historian/social psychologist would be unaware.

Hoffer Quote: "Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil."

And the positive attitude that Modern Orthodoxy has toward the world has NOT helped them to gain market share, nor has it even allowed them to hang on to their own people.

Haredim do lose a lot of their people (no, not everybody can extend Two Minutes of Hate into an entire life's mission; some people get tired of the sexual abuse scandal of the week/ chumra of the month), but their rabid hatred of EVERYTHING and EVERYBODY is an effective tool to keep them going as an active/non-shrinking movement.

And the fact that hatred is a stronger adhesive to a mass movement than love has been known for a long time. At least a half century before this book was written.

Other observations.....

Dershowitz observes that if you want to get attached to some secular movement, there is already one in existence that has Jewish overtones: 

1. Jewish feminism (p.318); 
2. Jewish environmentalism (p.317);  
3. Jewish ethics (p.315); 
4. Jewish spirituality (p.311--"You Don't Have to Become Buddhist.").

*****
Verdict: This book is fairly well written, and I'm agnostic on whether or not to recommend it to other people. 

1. Books in the future that discuss the state of Judaism will recapitulate the observations that Dershowitz has made--and that other authors have *been* making. 

And probably with many fewer words (I would estimate that this book can be condensed into 3 pages in a future book). 

And you can see this happen all the time when people discuss the history of Reform/Conservative Judaism.

2.. "Israel: The Ever-dying People" was written by the twentieth century Jewish thinker Simon Rawidowicz. Essentially, every generation of Jewish people thinks that they're going to be the last. And in this respect, Dershowitz is putting very old wine in new bottles.

3. There are a lot of good references in the book to not-quite-classical Jewish literature. (The work of people like Theodore Herzl and the Yiddishists. )

They might make good further reading.