A school that aims to stem the tide of assimilation within the community of
expat Israelis in the US might close down because it can’t meet its budget.
Will $150000 really separate between nurturing a Jewish connection and abandoning a generation to intermarriage?
Have you heard of Masoret Yehudit?
Or perhaps you haven’t yet heard of this educational network in the US with a school in Florida and another in Los Angeles — on a mission to fight the trend of assimilation among Israeli emigrants to America’s hospitable shores. Masoret Yehudit in tune with the needs of Israeli families in the US believes that every Jewish child should have access to high-quality affordable Jewish education that keeps them and their families connected to Judaism and Israel.
And now as we again gather together on Shavuos to receive the Torah as our ancestors did at the foot of Har Sinai “like one man with one heart ” it’s a good time to revisit the school and its agenda.
Sociological research over the last decade has revealed some surprising statistics. We all know about the “quiet holocaust” of rampant assimilation in the US and probably we also know that the lowest rate of assimilation is found among the Orthodox population. But what you might not have known is that the highest rate of assimilation is found among Israeli yordim. In fact immigrants from the Jewish State are even more likely to marry out than American Reform Jews. Lined up in ascending order on a bar graph showing assimilation rates the shortest bar would represent Orthodox Jewry followed by Conservative Reform… and Israelis.
The reasons for the alarming rate of assimilation among all sectors of the Jewish People are many but what makes Israelis take a quick exit from their people as soon as they set out on their new road in the land of opportunity? It’s due in part to the colossal failure of secular Zionism whose founding fathers believed so naively (or senselessly) that the nationhood of the Jewish People could be established upon nothing more than the Hebrew language and an attachment to the Land of Israel. The 613 mitzvos they thought served to preserve the nation’s identity as long as it was exiled in the Diaspora. But with the return to Zion the mitzvos suddenly became dispensable a needless encumbrance.
And what happened? Over a million Israeli Jews unaware it seems of this theory have poured out of their ancestral homeland in the last half century evidently feeling no special attachment to it nor to their ancestral tongue and within a few years after setting foot in the goldeneh medineh they have lost all connection to their people. Many of them see nothing wrong with marrying the non-Jewish Americans with whom they freely mix. Among these ?migr?s can be found men who served in the most elite units of the IDF men who fought bravely risking their lives in defense of the Jewish State. Yet they leave it all behind without a niggle of patriotic feeling toward the country they once fought for.
There are many Israelis both in Israel and ?migr?s living abroad who don’t believe there is a problem with intermarriage as long as the non-Jewish spouse speaks Hebrew. More than ten years ago when I was in Los Angeles as part of the lecturing staff at an Arachim seminar I met several youths sons of Israeli immigrants who told me without a blink that of course they were friends with non-Jewish girls and that these girls were in fact attending Hebrew ulpan courses given by the Jewish Agency set up especially for them so that they could follow the conversation of their Israeli boyfriends when they socialized together on Friday nights.
This is the tragedy taking place with the implicit consent of the secular Zionist movement and nobody has been doing much to stop it. If the trend continues in the direction the research shows anything Jewish about Israeli Jews in America will disappear in a whirlpool down the drain of assimilation within a few decades.
Unfortunately the typical Israeli yored in the US does not feel part of American Jewish society. He’s an Israeli. And often the various sectors that make up American Jewry don’t view these immigrants as integral parts of their communities either. With nothing anchoring them to their people they easily drift away to anyplace where they get a friendly reception.
What is to be done? Surely we can’t just stand by and watch the train speed away carrying our people toward self-extermination.
Masoret Yehudit has come forward to stop the train and take off as many Jews as they can. A group of young bnei Torah from Israel and America got together determined to find an effective way. They discovered a “soft spot” where they might get in and divert the course of many on that speeding train. They found that a large portion of the yordim are of Sephardic and Eastern ancestry and while they don’t identify as “religious ” they tend to remain “traditional.” They aren’t committed to mitzvah observance but they hold on to a thread that keeps them connected to things that make them feel Jewish: they might make Kiddush on Shabbos night perhaps they light Chanukah candles they go to synagogue on the holidays. But — and here is the big “but” — they can’t see their way clear to enrolling their children in Jewish schools for two reasons. Principally because tuition costs are too high for them and secondly because the Jewish schools are too frum for their level of observance. And so they resort to sending their children to public schools where those children have no exposure to Judaism at all. If their children are to be socially well-adjusted in these schools while seeing only a weak display of Jewish observance at home what else could happen to the next generation besides rampant assimilation?
This was the crack where the young activists of Masoret Yehudit could drive in a peg and offer an alternative. After much effort they opened a school and a preschool in Miami for the traditional Israeli population a school designed to accept their level of religious commitment and to nurture their attachment both to Judaism and to Eretz Yisrael. Tuition is kept low by private donations making Masoret Yehudit an attractive solution to a dilemma that once drove these children into public schools and the loss of their Jewish identity. Children educated in Masoret Yehudit schools may not grow up to be what we would call “frum ” but they will grow up as Jews. And if they take pride in their Jewish identity their risk of assimilation is greatly reduced.
Since I have a personal connection to some of the founders of Masoret Yehudit I was surprised to receive a phone call from New York last week to inform me that the branch they’d finally opened in Los Angeles would probably have to close. They were short of their budget by $150 000.
I was beside myself. “Are you crazy?” I said to the caller. “Because of that amount you would knowingly let Jewish children run over the edge of a cliff? Listen I can give you a list of frum millionaires in LA who could solve your problem with one signature! Surely you don’t mean to tell me you can’t find a single gvir who understands what a beautiful Yom Tov gift he could give to HaKadosh Baruch Hu by bringing one more group of Jews to Har Sinai this Shavuos!”
Silence.
“Nu say something!”
But the caller had nothing to say. Only a sad tense silence. I understood the unspoken words. Unless someone takes up a pen and rewrites the story what could have been a beautiful plot is stuck at least for now with a tragic ending.
But for now a gut Yom Tov to you all. —
“Lo baShamayim hi” (Devarim 30:12)
The Torah is not found among those Jews who think they’ve reached the Heavenly heights.
(Rebbe Menachem Mendel of Kotzk)