There’s a big difference between counting Jews and Jews counting.
That message seems to have gotten lost in all the hand-wringing following the recent release of the latest National Jewish Population Survey.
It wasn’t necessary for United Jewish Communities to spend $6 million to find out we’re getting older, we take the concept of zero-population growth too seriously and we’re shrinking as a percentage of the overall population.
So how to explain that we’ve probably never been more secure in America or more influential? It obviously isn’t our productivity in the bedroom.
Size counts, but its importance is exaggerated. More critical are motivation, energy, intelligence and commitment, as well as the perception of power.
Jews have long been involved in American political life, driven by a sense of civic duty and an urgent need to protect important community interests, whether it is the rights of religious minorities or the survival of Israel.
The greatest threat today to Jewish political clout may not be a falling population but a rising comfort level, a feeling that our survival here is secure and Israel is strong enough to take care of itself.
Whereas most Arab-Americans emigrated here to escape countries where they already were free to be Arabs, Jews came looking for a place where they could be free to be Jewish. In the process, Jews worked to build a Jewish state, which many Arabs tried to destroy.
It took generations for Jews to accumulate political clout and comfort, to get to the point where they did not feel obligated to vote for a candidate just because he or she was Jewish.
The Jewish community has never relied on raw numbers for its influence, but being in the right place at the right time — raising needed funds and turning out enough votes in close elections to make a difference.
Politically, Jews have shown a knack for adapting to new situations. The key has always been an educated, committed and sophisticated political base, not sheer numbers.
A young Jewish aide once asked a veteran Southwestern senator why he had a 100 percent pro-Israel voting record. “I love Israel [pronounced Izru]), and every time a bill, resolution, letter or something comes up, all 50,000 Jews in my state call me, write to me or come in to see me,” demanding support.
That kind of political activism is important, especially in a state where the actual number of Jews was less than 10 percent of what the senator thought it was. That’s the formula: the demonstration of energy plus the perception of power.
Jewish voter turnout is traditionally well above the national average. Equally important is that as Jews migrate to communities and states where historically their numbers have been few, they are no longer reluctant to assert their Jewishness. And being Jewish is not the barrier it once was to public office.
Today Jews are elected to courthouses, statehouses and federal offices in such once-unlikely places as Alabama, Iowa, Nevada, Utah, Alaska, Virginia, Oregon and Texas. Wisconsin, a state where Jews comprise about 0.5 percent of the population, has two Jewish U.S. senators.
Increasingly, Jews are bipartisan political players, although less as voters and candidates than as contributors and workers. Jews still are voting 70 percent Democratic despite repeated Republican predictions that a dramatic change was imminent. There are still only two Jewish Republicans in the House of Representatives (and one is retiring) and one in the Senate.
Demographics are not the only area of change. A new generation of Jews is replacing the one shaped by memories of the Holocaust and Israel’s early struggle for survival. They are removed from the immigrant experience that shaped the outlook of prior generations; they have a higher comfort level and broader interests.
That will affect their voting patterns and could create opportunities for Republicans to make gains. That may be bad news for the Democrats, but it’s good news for Jews; being a “swing” vote multiplies a community’s political influence.
Exactly how many Jews there are is in dispute. United Jewish Communities, which sponsored the latest study, says there are 5.2 million; other studies that put the numbers at 6.1 million and 6.7 million.
Whatever the number, it should be seen as a challenge — to bring more Jews into the community.
In reality, only a small number of Jews are actively involved in Jewish communal life.
As the community grays, the economy worsens and government’s contributions to vital health and social service programs shrink, the burden on federations and other philanthropies expands.
Federations often tend to be program-oriented rather than community or culturally focused. To a degree their view of the world through green eyeshades is understandable, but it can be costly.
Leadership is too often determined by an ability to write big checks, and then passed on to others with similarly deep pockets. This tends to exclude from the policy-making ranks those less financially endowed although they may be more creative and willing to challenge the old ideas that have created what we have today.
Professional and lay leaders concentrate their energies on cultivating the major givers. The dollars are important, but are they more important than people?
I recently asked the president of a major federation what was being done to identify and involve the community’s unaffiliated Jews. It was clear she thought it was a dumb question and dismissed it, saying, “It’s just not cost-effective.”
Nothing will do more to accelerate the declining size and influence of the American Jewish community than failing to expand the small circle of activists and bring in a new generation.
Many young married people probably cannot afford to give a “major gift” or maybe anything, but is that a good reason to ignore them?
Where is it inscribed that community leadership is a function of bank balances?
The message of the population study should be this: The most important challenge for a shrinking Jewish community is to find news ways to increase Jewish political and communal involvement.
The work being done now, political or philanthropic, comes from a very small percentage of people, many of whom are aging.
The $6 million UJC just paid to learn the obvious would have been better spent on outreach, finding and engaging people who may not be able to write fat checks but can contribute richly to Jewish life in America in many other ways.