Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $10.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
October
24, 2003
Harry
Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
October
23, 2003
Diane
Christian
Ruthlessness
Kurt Nimmo
Criticizing Zionism
David Lindorff
A General Theory of Theology
Alan Maass
The Future of the Anti-War Movement
William
Blum
Imperial
Indifference
Stew Albert
A Memo
October
22, 2003
Wayne
Madsen
Religious
Insanity Runs Rampant
Ray McGovern
Holding
Leaders Accountable for Lies
Christopher
Brauchli
There's
No Civilizing the Death Penalty
Elaine
Cassel
Legislators
and Women's Bodies
Bill Glahn
RIAA
Watch: the New Morality of Capitalism
Anthony Arnove
An Interview with Tariq Ali
October 21, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Beilin Agreement
Robert Jensen
The Fundamentalist General
David
Lindorff
War Dispatch from the NYT: God is on Our Side!
William S. Lind
Bremer is Deaf to History
Bridget
Gibson
Fatal Vision
Alan Haber
A Human Chain for Peace in Ann Arbor
Peter
Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Hanging of Thomas Russell
October
20, 2003
Standard
Schaefer
Chile's
Failed Economy: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Chris
Floyd
Circus Maximus: Arnie, Enron and Bush Maul California
Mark Hand
Democrats Seek to Disappear Chomsky
& Nader
John &
Elaine Mellencamp
Peaceful
World
Elaine
Cassel
God's
General Unmuzzled
October
18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
October
17, 2003
Stan Goff
Piss
On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War
Newton
Garver
Bolivia
in Turmoil
Standard
Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack
Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52
Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
BRIDGES
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
October
24, 2003
The Demographics of
American Jews
"My People are American.
My Time is Today."
By LENNI BRENNER
A friend once got a bit of a reputation by pointing
out that "you don't need the weatherman to know which way
the wind is blowing." But you do need a demographer to know
which way the Jews are going.
Some readers will recall the journalistic
hockey brawl in the NY Times over the National Jewish Population
Survey 2000/2001, partially released in October 2002. Now the
full survey is out, but the sticks are still flying, and the
penalty box is full.
J. J. Goldberg, editor of Forward, the
leading 'Jewish community' weekly, contributed an op-ed to the
9/17 Times, denouncing "flawed figures." James Tisch,
chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations, replied in the 9/22 issue, defending their numbers
against "critics" who "try in vain to ascribe
to us ulterior motives."
If gentile readers were confused about
the furor, they will be comforted in knowing that most Jews likewise
don't grasp the underlying issues. But valid stats are crucial
to a scientific understanding of the evolution of American Jewry.
And with the US military all over the Middle East, and Palestine/Israel
certain to be a priority concern in the forthcoming presidential
election, universal misunderstanding of the status of Jewry in
modern America can have fatal consequences for Palestinians,
Israelis and Americans.
The best way for us to start is with
the reader estimating the percentage of Americans who are Jews.
Got your number? Now the scholars' calculations. Their figures
sit between 2.2% and 2.5%. Now compare your estimate and these
figures with the guesses put forth by Americans in a 3/90 Gallup
poll.
Twenty-four percent had no opinion. Beyond
them, the average American thought that America was 18% Jewish.
That broke down to eight percent of Americans
thinking that Jews are less than 5% of the people, 10% saying
that Jews are between 5% and 9%, 25% believing that Jews are
between 10% and 19%, 18% estimating that Jews are between 20%
and 29%, 12% coming up with between 30% and 49%, and 3% reckoning
that Jews are 50% -- or more! -- of all Americans.
Pretty wild? But why should gentile Americans
know better? Their guesses are based on what they see. Turn on
the TV, go to the movies, pick up a newspaper, follow an election,
and in every case Jewish involvement is far above 2.5%.
It is much more shocking that most Jewish
estimates are also surreal. Here are the numbers given by American
Jews in a 3/98 poll, done nationally by the LA Times.
Twelve percent of our Jews think they
are 2% of Americans, 13% think Jews are 3%, and 11% say they
don't know, which is also a 'proper' answer. But 7% of America's
Jews think they are 1% of Americans. Five percent of the Jews
thought Jews are 4%. Ten percent of the Jews said they are 5%.
Eighteen percent believed Jews are 6-10%. Six percent estimated
our Jews to be 11-15%, and 18% of America's Jews projected themselves
as over 15% of the population, a whopping margin of error of
over 600%.
So, where did those delicious Jewish
overestimations come from? Jews know the country is overwhelmingly
Protestant, and that the Jewish percentage is much smaller than
the Catholics. But they watch the same TV, go to the same movies,
etc. Thus, while their numbers aren't as stratospheric as most
gentiles, they likewise tend to be on the high side.
There are two reasons for the Jewish
miscalculations. They fall into two broad categories, religious
and non-religious. Pious Jews may or may not read the Bible,
but the overwhelming majority definitely don't read much about
the mundane history of Judaism since biblical times. And while
atheists and agnostics know enough about their ex-religion's
follies to justify abandoning it, once they bail
out they usually lose interest in its evolution.
To be sure, many Jews, nationally, read
the NY Times, which ran stories on the 1990 NJPS and the 2000-1
follow-up. Atheists might read an article about a bombing in
Israel, but they often ignore articles about Judaism as a religion
as they see it as not worth reading about. And most religious
Jews don't read the Times or the community weeklies which sit,
for the most part unbought, on newsstands in their neighborhoods.
The scholars, real and alleged, argue
over the absolute number of Jews because the US census doesn't
count people by religion and it doesn't accept 'Jewish' as an
ethnic category. While the contested figures range from 5.2 million
in the 2000-1 Survey, to a high of 6.7 million give by a few
dissenters, the blood really flows over the intermarriage rate.
The 1990 Survey reported a 52% intermarriage
rate. The latest survey reports that "the intermarriage
rate for Jews who have married since 1996 is 47%. Differences
between intermarriage rates ... are due to differences between
the "born Jewish" definition used for the 1990 analysis
and the "currently Jewish" definition used in this
report."
They say that 1990 NJPS researchers "calculated
and presented an intermarriage rate for 'born Jews,' a category
that included those they considered Jewish at the time of the
survey and some they considered non-Jewish, including non-Jews
who had been born to at least one Jewish parent and were raised
in a non-Jewish religion."
They admit further on that "In the
current survey, applying the broad "born Jews" definition
to people whose marriages began in 1991-95 and since 1996 yields
intermarriage rates of 53% and 54%, respectively."
To understand their distinctions between
"born Jews" and "currently Jewish," you must
appreciate the sociological law which, as I'm its discoverer,
I call, with my customary modesty, Brenner's law: All religions
lie about how many followers they have, and all left wing groups
lie about how many people came to their last demonstration. Indeed,
more paper has been wasted on debates over who is a Jew than
on any other topic, including who really is a Trotskyist.
Today, with the enormous intermarriage
rate, the Jewish establishment can't face reality. They know
that "slightly more than a fifth of Jewish adults who were
raised by two Jewish parents are intermarried. In contrast, nearly
three-quarters of Jewish adults with just one Jewish parent are
intermarried. In other words, Jewish adults who are the children
of intermarriages are more than three times as likely to be married
to non-Jews themselves. At the same time, among those who had
intermarried parents, a Jewish upbringing reduces the rate of
intermarriage. Almost 60% of Jewish adults who were raised Jewish
by intermarried parents are themselves intermarried, compared
to 86% of their counterparts who had intermarried parents but
were not raised Jewish by them."
So they stopped counting adults who convert
to another monotheistic religion as Jews, and don't put kids
of intermarried Jews, who aren't raised Jewish, in their 'current
Jews' category, and, lo presto, they come up with the 47% figure.
Serious scholars find this grotesque.
Bob Dylan, my friend mentioned above, converted to Christianity.
But many pollsters consider him to be the most famous Jew of
his generation. Subsequently, Bob oriented towards Menachem Schneersohn,
the late Lubavicher 'rebbe,' who most members of his Orthodox
sub-sect believe to be the messiah, hovering over his grave in
New York, eventually to come back again. It would be unworkable
for demographers tracking the evolution of Jewry to drop Bob
from their rolls of Jewry because he became a Jesus freak, and
then put him back, but as a convert from Christianity.
When doing scientific surveys of religions,
races, nationalities, the standard rule is 'all's fish that comes
into the net.' T. S. Elliot became a British citizen, but every
literary critic correctly lists him as an American poet.
The intermarriage rate has become such
an obsession with the Jewish honchos that they overlook an even
more ominous stat. Eight out of 10 Jews living with a sexual
partner without benefit of clergy is sleeping with a non-Jew.
But in their formalistic minds, 'only' 47%, for marriages, means
that they are still in business, if in deep trouble, whereas
if a majority of kids with at least one born Jewish parent intermarry,
and the rest are shacking up with gentiles, "organized Jewry,"
as their journals call them, is unmistakably little more than
the dirty ring in the bathtub after the water is gone down the
drain.
For all their abracadabras, Judaism is
well and truly shriveling up, everywhere except in Israel, and
it doesn't matter what intermarriage percentage they concoct.
Intermarriage is a symptom of the collapse of Jewry, not its
cause.
The 1st colonial American Jews, known
as the Sephardim, of Portuguese and Spanish descent, in time
intermarried and converted to Christianity, as did most of the
1st colonial Ashkenazis, meaning German and Eastern European
Jews. In the 19th century, almost 200,000 German Jews came here.
About 60,000 converted in that century. By now, most of the rest
have intermarried, tho not necessarily converted, and have no
connection to organized Jewry.
From 1881 and the 1st czarist pogroms,
thru to 1921, when the US established immigration quotas, to
keep out Jews and other undesirables, a minority of Ashkenazis
from the Russian empire came here already Marxist atheists. They
still considered themselves Jews because they spoke Yiddish,
which only Jews spoke. Once here, they recruited other immigrants
to leftist atheism.
In the 30s, another minority of American-born
Jews became Communists. They also saw themselves as Jews because
most lived in Jewish neighborhoods, and most married atheist
Jews. Moreover anti-Semitism was still a force here, and they
were considered Jews by the larger American public. But most
of their descendants, usually no longer leftists, are completely
assimilated
Today things are significantly different.
Many young Jews grow up in 'white' suburbs, mixed in with gentiles.
They don't know a word of Yiddish. They go to school with and
then work with gentiles. Most of them never encounter anti-Semitism.
This is the sociological basis for the intermarriage wave.
Their great-grandparents came here 'Orthodox,'
now only 9.7% of our Jews, by the NJPS numbers, even less in
other surveys. Orthodoxy segregates women in a separate section
of the synagogue. Only men can be rabbis. Everyone keeps the
kosher laws, no pork, shrimp, etc. Somewhere along the line most
of their families abandoned Orthodoxy for either the 'Conservative'
sect, 15.2%, with its synagogues having local option on segregation
and women rabbis, or 'Reform,' 17.4%. They have complete gender
equality and now have some gay rabbis. They also have, according
to rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, an intermarriage rate of "60%
to 70%."
Even if they went to Hebrew school after
their day in public school, after their bar mitzvah, their initiation
into theological adulthood, at 13, most drop away from any form
of Jewish identification. Some of the consequences were described
by Reform's Michael Myers in "Beyond Survival and Philanthropy,"
a book based on a symposium in Israel, re the disintegration
of American Jewry:
"Host cultures, especially that
of America, represent a more serious threat to our collective
Jewish existence than ever before. Not only are Jews more socially
acceptable then ever in the past, but so is Judaism. The problem
is that Jewish tradition is seen as narrow and prejudiced the
moment it makes any claim to exclusivity, the moment it makes
any claim to superiority."
Two contributors, Steven Cohen and Charles
Liebman, presented the problem from a Zionist perspective:
"After all, if all people are to
be treated equally without regard to race, religion, national
origin, sex, and most recently, sexual preference, how can American
Jews feel totally comfortable in maintaining a special relationship
with, let alone granting preference to, Israelis?
The end result of the process of de facto
assimilation is expressed in a host of stats from the 2000-1
NJPS, and from the American Jewish Identity Survey-2001, done
at the Center for Jewish Studies at City University of New York.
The latter is based on the methodology of the 1990 NJPS and is
more reliable than the 2000-1 NJPS, compromised as it is by sugarcoating
facts to please the establishment.
According to the AJIS, "More Jews
than most other Americans respond 'None,' when asked 'What is
your religion, if any?'.... Fewer Jews than members of most other
American religious groups agree with the essential proposition
of religious belief that 'God exists.'" Twenty-seven percent
of all Jews are uncertain or reject theism, with only 14% of
Americans saying they have no religion. The AJIS reported that
by 2001 only 51% still believed in some form of Judaism, a 12%
decline since 1990. By my reckoning, by this writing, a majority
of US Jews reject Judaism. Even the NJPS 2000-1 concedes that
only 46% belong to synagogues. That minority divides up 39% Reform,
33% Conservative, 21% Orthodox, 7% other types.
Inevitably the Zionist movement has been
dramatically affected by the migrations into religious skepticism
and intermarriage. A 1995 American Jewish Committee poll found
only 22 percent of America's Jews calling themselves Zionists,
down from 90 percent in 1948. I haven't found a later percentage
figure, but, according to an article in New York's May 2002 Jewish
Post, the decline continues. In 1997, 107,802 votes were cast
for American delegates to the World Zionist Congress. In 2002,
88,753 votes were cast.
Even that decline doesn't tell the whole
story of the movement's decadence. Reform's slate got 42.24%
of the vote, the conservatives received 22.29% and the Orthodox
slate garnered 20.23%. The American branch of the Israeli Labor
Party got 2.2% and Meretz, a liberal ally of the LP received
3.96%. The rest went to tiny factions supporting Sharon's ruling
Likud Party.
Followers of the late terrorist, Meir
Kahane, are not allowed to run in the elections, but they number
a few dozen to a couple of hundred, at most. The most significant
outside group are the Lubavitchers, who number about 15,000.
They are major funders of the Likud and many New York Democrats
and Republicans. When the rebbe was alive, a visit to him was
a ritual stop for our politicians. Altho most Jews look upon
the Lubavichers as the Jewish Amish, and have nothing to do with
them, a photo op with Schneersohn meant you were 'good for the
Jews.'
The election percentages give an impression
that is contradicted by visible reality. Everyone attending the
annual NY Salute to Israel Day parade notices that almost all
the men wear kippot, Hebrew for skull caps, which tells us that
they are Orthodox. Reform and Conservative rabbis got their congregations
to sign up for the election so that they could put pressure on
the Israeli government to grant equality to their co-religionists
there, who are not allowed to legally marry or divorce even their
own followers. But the bulk of the voters do nothing more than
vote.
The vote drop from 1997 to 2002 can be
explained, in large part, by disenchantment over the fact that
Israel didn't do anything significant in the way granting them
their rights. Reform Zionists have an ideology of 'Jewish peoplehood,'
which ties them to Israel in spite of their getting nothing more
than a kick in the teeth from the government. In case you haven't
noticed, most politicians, everywhere, operate on one principle.
'If we don't give the beggars what they want, what will they
do to hurt us?' Since the Reform rabbis will do nothing, they
get nothing. But the penalty they and Zionism pay is that the
bulk of Reform, especially the youth, are de facto non-Zionist.
As Beyond Survival and Philanthropy delicately put it, US Jews
"have such difficulty appreciating the virtual monopoly
the Orthodox exercise over the meaning of Judaism in Israel."
Our universities are disaster areas for
Judaism and Zionism. Darwin and physics courses destroy most
students lingering faith in the Old Testament. And the devil,
taking the form of left-wing professors and the anti-war movement,
does the rest. The 1/4/02 issue of Ha' aretz, Israel's liberal
daily, reported that out of "about 400,000 Jewish students
... only about 5 percent have any connection to the Jewish community."
In many respects, the best illustration
of Zionism's increasing isolation are the tourist stats. According
to the NJPS, "just over one-third of all American Jewish
adults have been to Israel, (35%)." Ninety-two percent of
all Jews have traveled abroad, but England and France outrank
Israel as a destination. Altho Reform's members are the most
affluent of the 3 groups, they are least likely to go to Israel.
We see this again with immigration to
Israel. Most of the true believers who go there to live, and
especially the ones who actually stay, are Orthodox.
It is characteristic of the NJPS that
it didn't ask a direct question, 'are you a Zionist?' Instead
it asked vague questions as to emotional attachment, whether
US and Israeli Jews shared a common destiny, etc.
"My people are American. My time
is today." George Gershwin, who was never even bar mitzvahed,
said that in 1926. Its taken decades for the typical young Jew
to get to that point, but that is the case today. And the assimilation
process is a worldwide one, with intermarriage rates of over
50% in every country in the world except Israel and Australia,
and even in that last country the rate is climbing.
Why then is the Zionist lobby so powerful
when their own scholars write endlessly about the alienation
of their youth from the movement? The answer is simple: the Jews
are the richest ethnic or religious stratum in the US. Because
their standard of living is so high, they are the most educated.
Because they are the most educated, they are the most scientific
oriented, hence most inclined towards atheism or religious skepticism.
But the true believer minority still has an unbelievable amount
of money to throw at the politicians.
In 1991, I interviewed Harold Seneker,
then the editor of the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans,
for an article in The Nation. I told him that I found Jews, 2.2%
of the population, to be about 25% of the 400. He told me that
he thought this a success story, both for American capitalism
and for the Jews, and that he wanted to write a story on it.
But Forbes wouldn't let him. The then publisher had gone thru
the Hitler era, when talking about Jewish money was an anti-Semitic
specialty.
This mentality is still common on the
left as well, and it is wide spread among elderly Jews. Forbes,
much of the left, and old Jews share what must be called a 'folk
Marxist' mentality. Despite the differences in their politics,
they all believe that history repeats itself. Someday there is
going to be another 1929 Depression. The capitalists will, once
again, call up central casting and get another Hitler to smash
the left.
This is fantasy. Its a projection of
the past, and Germany's past at that, into America's future.
In reality, journalists constantly turn out articles for Zionist
publications about how Jewish campaign contributors play a major
role in funding both parties and, very rarely, the topic is touched
on in the mainstream media. "The Political Future of American
Jews," a1985 American Jewish Congress pamphlet by Seymour
Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, declared that "While there
have been few reliable statistics on the subject -- and some
reluctance to gather any -- the journalistic and anecdotal evidence
is overwhelming that more than a majority of Democratic funds
on a national level, and as much as a quarter of Republican funds
have come from Jewish sources." They were referring to private
contributions, as was an article in the 1/5/93 NY Times announcing
that "Jews contributed about 60 percent of Mr. Clinton's
noninstitutional campaign funds."
My estimate is that 84 of the latest
400 are Jews. The magazine doesn't list religious affiliations
unless the person involved is distinctive in giving to religious
charities, etc. And not all of the Jews are pro-Zionists. Some
listees are among the educated disaffiliated we are discussing.
But Zionist money is prodigious. James Tisch, chair of the Conference
of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations isn't on the list,
altho he is CEO of Loews Corp., listed on the Fortune 500 list.
But daddy, Laurence, is, at $2 billion, and uncle Preston is
worth $2.3 billion. His predecessors at the Conference were Ronald
Lauder, $1.8 billion, and Mort Zuckerman, who struggles along
with a penny ante $1.2 billion. Chaim Sabon, $1.7 billion, is
a University of California regent. Mayhaps he got the job because
he gave the Democrats the largest campaign contribution in American
history?
Because of the establishment's cover-up
of the extent of the disintegration of organized Jewry, it is
reasonable to think that most gentile politicians don't realize
it. But the Jewish pols do. And there is no reason to think that
the gentiles would stop pandering to Zionists even if they understood
that they are a shrinking minority among Jews.
Both major parties pick their candidates
via primaries which any member can enter. So occasionally an
honest Democrat or Republican is elected to congress and begins
to criticize their party's Israel über alles line. Usually
it doesn't take long before a tidal wave of Zionist cash pours
in against them in the next election and out they go.
Some Arabs denounce Zionist funding,
all day and all night, but there is no way of suppressing Zionist
campaign contributions without doing away with the whole structure
of privately funded campaigns, and they never talk about that.
Many leftists don't like to talk about it because of their fear
of raising anti-Semitism. They want to talk about oil money.
That's fine. Any kid who they let cross streets alone knows that
oil is the major reason that the US in so deeply involved in
the Middle East. But that doesn't explain why the two capitalist
parties are so pro-Zionist. Indeed their pro-Zionism creates
problems for them with the Arab masses. And it doesn't explain
why liberal Democrats are as zealous for Israel as the most fanatic
Republican Christian Zionist.
If liberals constantly badmouths big
business, they don't get contributions from the major corporations.
But Zionist money is single issue money. A liberal can dump on
oil companies, or whatever, and he still gets a share of the
Zionist gusher.
A personal experiences tell it all about
liberals and Zionism. In 1971, the Vietnam-era National Peace
Action Coalition asked me to draw in Eldon Clingen, the Liberal
Party member of the New York City Council from Manhattan. We
had been in the Socialist Party's youth In the 1950s. He joined
the Libs on assignment but subsequently involved himself in Democratic
Party politics, without changing party registration. But, as
he was "Mr. Clean Air" for his leadership in the anti-pollution
effort, the Libs asked him to be their Council candidate.
He was pleased to get his Lib faction
involved. We chatted. I mentioned that lower-case liberals, against
war in Vietnam, shot passing Arabs, even camels, to get Jewish
votes.
"Oh, you have me wrong. I'm of Christian
descent, and when I think of the terrible things Christians have
done to Jews, I say I can't do enough for the Jews."
I told him that the next time he called
for more 'enough' for Israel, he should write a check to me because,
although I'm a Jew, I don't get any of that 'enough.'
"OK, I'll tell it like it is: In
order for a liberal -- and I mean a lower-case liberal -- to
win in New York, he must have the Black, Puerto Rican and Jewish
votes because he can't get the Irish or Italian vote. They are
locked away with the right-wing. But Blacks and Puerto Ricans
don't give us money. So don't tell me about terrible things Israelis
are doing to Palestinians. It would upset me. But I'm not going
to break with my meal ticket."
The moral of the story is that, while
it is crucial to talk about oil industry domination of US foreign
policy, it is just as crucial to talk about Zionist funding and
its enormous influence on domestic politics. The discussion of
both factors must be within a context of insisting that ordinary
Americans, Jew or gentile, are fools if they continue to support
parties that are so obviously funded by the rich.
Far from being afraid of discussing Zionist
funding, it should be a major point in any critique of private
contributions. Jews are less than 2.5% of the people. Zionists
are now considerably less than 22% of all Jews. (My current estimate
is ca. 10%.) And rich campaign contributors are a minority of
Zionists. Yet we have an overwhelmingly gentile Congress that
is emphatically more pro-Zionist than the majority of Jews.
Far from being a diversion of public
attention from the capitalist nature of American politics, as
some leftists fear, talking about Zionist money is one of the
best ways of making that point. Because of the civil rights struggle
and other battles, equality for all races, religions, nationalities,
has become part of the broad American value system. Because of
this, my percentage estimate of the Jewish proportion of the
400 richest Americans, which, trust me on this, is shared by
serious scholars, has an automatic tendency to shock. But isn't
capitalism is about inequality? It is absurd to think that a
system that sanctifies inequality could be egalitarian in the
ethno-religious distribution of wealth.
All that is necessary to make the important
point that it isn't Jewish contributions but Zionist slush that
is offensive, is to cite the fact that we now can see that the
Zionists are a minority of Jews. Talk about the oil industry
and Zionist contributions at the same time, and people will get
the correct idea that we are trying to explain a complex problem
in detail.
Let's go further. What US support for
Israel and support for Saudi Arabia additionally have in common
is that both regimes are theocratic states. An atheist of Jewish
background should be concerned if we talked about Israel and
didn't talk about Saudi Arabia. So the moral of the story is
talk about both. Additionally, everyone now sees a growing alliance
between the Zionist establishment and the so-called Christian
Zionists. These fanatics support Israel because of their lunatic
notion that the creation of Israel means that Christ is coming,
any minute now, to save a Christian America, and send all those
atheist Jews, and atheist gentiles, to hell. Hitherto, the Jewish
establishment could at least be relied on to resist attempts
to convert America into a 'Christian' government. But, with the
new alliance on foreign policy, that resistance is getting weaker
and weaker. The Christian right now reasonably expects an increase
in Zionist votes and funding for their candidates. Indeed it
is a central tenet of Jewish neo-con politics that it is unreasonable
to expect perpetual Christian Zionist support for Israel, unless
they get something back in return.
In other words, we are now in a complex
political crisis with profound domestic and international consequences.
A complex situation can't be dealt with in a one-sided manner.
We have no choice but to examine all parts of the situation.
If we denounce all the criminals, Americans, Arabs, Christians,
Israelis, Jews, Muslims, for their crimes, from a democratic
secular perspective, in a scientific manner, the Zionists and
their Democratic and Republican patrons can say anything they
want. An educated public will see that we don't want to deny
anyone their rights. On the contrary, they will see that we want
to extend human equality and secularism, here and in the Middle
East.
Lenni Brenner
is editor of 51
Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis, and
a contributor to CounterPunch's new book The
Politics of Anti-Semitism (AK Press). Brenner will be
one of the featured speakers, along with Alex Cockburn and Jeffrey
Blankfort, at the CounterPunch forum
on the book in Berkeley on October 19. He can be reached
at BrennerL21@aol.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|