by Zev Chafets
I left the synagogue and walked through the town. Colchester is built around a village green, complete with white steepled church, red brick schoolhouse, and a war memorial. The roster of veterans on the monument tells the story of the town. Its Civil War vets had names like Hawthorne, Styles, and Johnston; but by World War I, the names had changed to Saul Agranovitch and Isador Blatt, Hyman Kravitzky and Julius Cohen. Dozens of Jewish boys served in World War I, World War II, and Korea. Three—Rudy Klein, Morris Heller, and Richard Adler—have stars beside their names.
I stood looking at the monument for a long moment; in Israel, the war memorials list soldiers with similar last names. Then I walked across the green to Tami’s Cafe, where Sid Einhorn and old man Steg were chewing the fat.
Mr. Steg sat at the horseshoe-shaped counter sipping weak coffee and tapping a spoon to a Boxcar Willie rendition of “Lonesome Hobo” that was playing on the jukebox. He was born in Europe around the turn of the century and came to town as a young man. Now in his mid-eighties, he is still alert and dapper. For many years, Steg was the town assessor. He also served as president at the local Knights of Pythias chapter and as master of the Colchester Grange with the rank of Ceres.
Sid Einhorn sat across the horseshoe counter and munched a doughnut. Einhorn is a powerfully built fellow with a farmer’s sloping shoulders and big weather-hardened hands. His father moved to Colchester around 1910 and worked as a cutter at the S&S Leather Company. Later, just after World War I, he bought a poultry farm, where Sid was born and raised.
“It was Little Israel around here in those days,” said Einhorn, and Steg nodded in agreement. “I was six or seven before I spoke anything but Yiddish. I never even saw anyone who wasn’t Jewish until the first grade.”
“There weren’t many goyim around then,” Steg observed with the judiciousness of a retired politician, “but the ones there were were fine people.”
“Fine people,” Einhorn agreed. “A goy’s a goy, but they were good people.”
Einhorn bought his first farm when he was seventeen, a thirty-acre poultry operation, and he spent the next three decades raising chickens and cattle. But it was impossible to make a living as a small farmer, and after World War II he bought a feed and hardware store to supplement his income.
“When I first started out, chickens were still floor birds,” he said. “In those days, one man could take care of seven thousand layers. But nowadays, everything’s in cages. One man can take care of seventy thousand or eighty thousand birds. There’s no way that small farmers can compete with that. So I gave it up in the mid-sixties. But I still get outdoors plenty. I go trout fishing and deer hunting. It’s still great country up here.”
“The greatest country in the world,” said Steg, and tapped his spoon on his coffee cup for a refill.
As we were talking, Steve Schwartz came in. He greeted Einhorn, whose father used to sleep on the floor of Steve’s grandfather’s factory when he first came to town. He greeted Mr. Steg, who assessed his father’s business. He greeted the waitress, who gave him a cup of coffee without being asked.
Steve Schwartz knows everyone in Colchester and everyone knows him. His factory employs four hundred fifty people—out of a population of eight thousand. The S&S Christmas party is the major social event of the Colchester calendar. The Schwartz family has been in town for almost one hundred years.
Later that afternoon, Jake Mitzengendler and Marcia Schuster dropped in at the Schwartzes’ for a visit. Marcia is the daughter of another of Colchester’s leading Jewish families; her father, Paul Schuster, started out hauling fruit to market and eventually established the Schuster Trucking Company. Jake is a newcomer by local standards. He came to the United States from the Soviet Union in 1960 and settled in Colchester. His arrival in town was dramatic; on his first day in school he built a large, high-flying paper airplane that, in the post-Sputnik era, impressed and frightened his classmates.
Steve Schwartz and Marcia Schuster began to reminisce about their town and its folklore. They recalled old man Balaban, the cleaner who wore your suit all week before returning it laundered on Friday; the regulars at the shul who always kept a bottle of schnapps hidden under the synagogue stairwell for their morning medicinal shots and referred to the members of the rival synagogue as “the mugwumps”; the time Yank Broder had a tryout with the Boston Red Sox; the days when special trains used to leave Grand Central Station for Colchester, bringing up citified Jews for a week of fresh air at the Cohen Hotel. They told stories about the redneck Yiddish-speaking farmers who would spit tobacco into the gutter as they idled in front of the general stores and ice cream parlors along Merchant’s Row, across from the war memorial. There was a timeless quality to the nostalgia. Events from the early days mixed easily with anecdotes from recent years. Colchester folklore comes naturally to Steve Schwartz and Marcia Schuster; it is their birthright.
Toward evening, Marcia and Jake left. Steve and Carla and I sat in the darkening shadows and chatted about the town and its future. Steve hopes that one of his sons will come home after college and take over the family business, making him the fourth generation at S&S.
“I’m not sure that either of them will want to, and we won’t get bent out of shape if they don’t, but it would be nice,” Steve said. “We have a big investment—and not just financial—in this place.”
“You’d never consider leaving, would you?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think so. But I’ll be honest, I’m less sure today than I was a few years ago. Not long ago there was a kind of an anti-Semitic incident here in town. Nothing major, but still, it got us to thinking. That’s when we sat down and made a contingency plan.”
“What kind of contingency plan?”
“Nothing drastic,” Steve said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Just some thoughts about what we’d do if we were ever forced to leave Colchester or the United States in a hurry. I’m sure we’ll never need them, but …”
Suddenly I remembered the paper their son had written for his Harvard history course. “ ‘The Jews in Colchester are as firmly rooted in the land as the oldest Yankee families,’ ” I quoted. “Adam wrote that.”
Steve thought for a long moment. “Did he? Well, he’s right. We are rooted here. But we’re not Yankees. And after Germany, well, you never know. I mean, you never really know.”
While American Jewry focuses on the Holocaust and Israel, it has yet to come to terms with the clear and present danger of erosion from within. A generation ago, most Jews married other Jews; today, in many parts of the United States, this is no longer true. Sometimes the non-Jewish partner converts—according to the UAHC, between four hundred thousand and five hundred thousand American Jews were born Christian. Often, however, this is not the case.
Experts dispute the impact of intermarriage on the number of Jews in America. But there is no doubt that it has drastically altered the ethnic composition and internal dynamics of the Jewish community. Converts, even the most dedicated, have no tradition of Jewish solidarity, no blood ties to other Jews past or present, and no inherited Jewish cultural attitudes or skills. They may be devout believers or active members of their congregations; but it is unlikely that they will ever scrutinize film credits for Jewish names or cry when they see Fiddler on the Roof.
Some people view the demise of the old kosher nostra kind of ethnicity as a tragedy; but if so, it is an inevitable one. America does not offer the conditions for a distinct Eastern European-like Jewish culture. In most places, Judaism doesn’t seem to be about anything. It is a holding operation—an effort to wring one more generation of allegiance from people who are no longer sure what being a Jew is all about. In Israel, the national anthem is “Ha-Tikvah,” the hope; in America it is, “We’re Here Because We’re Here.”
When I was in Los Angeles, I discussed the shape of the Jewish future in America over lunch at Factor’s Deli with Bruce Phillips, who teaches demography at the Hebrew Union College, and Norman Mirsky, an eccentric
sociologist who claims to be able to categorize Jews according to body type.
“There is a definite correlation between weight and affiliation,” Mirsky asserted. “The more Orthodox the congregation, the worse the bodies. And vice versa, the more Reform, the better the bodies. Temple Leo Baeck is the most upscale synagogue in L.A., and its bodies are absolutely the best. It’s what I’d call a size three congregation.”
My sister Julie and her husband Alan were there that day, and they laughed appreciatively. They don’t belong to Leo Baeck, but they could. Alan, in his early forties, is a Harvard-educated lawyer with a gentle, ironic manner. Julie is a bright, charmingly kooky suburban mom who works half time as a program director for their Reform temple. They have a split-level house, a Japanese car, a Chevy van, a live-in housekeeper from El Salvador, and two small sons. Not long ago their six-year-old, Benjamin, asked if all Christians speak Spanish.
Julie and Alan care about being Jews. Although he is not Orthodox, Alan puts on a tallis and prays every morning. Julie takes courses at the University of Judaism. They are active in their temple, send their kids to Hebrew school, celebrate the holidays, and on Friday nights gather around the table to light Sabbath candles and sing blessings over the bread and the wine. They live in a safe little island of prosperity and middle-class respectability, like a Jewish Cosby family.
There are families like this all over the country, but they are rapidly becoming exceptional. In L.A., only one Jewish family in four belongs to a synagogue, and less than fifteen percent give money to the local federation. And by the year 2000, half the children under eighteen who consider themselves Jewish in Los Angeles will have a non-Jewish parent. “The numbers out here are a little worse than the rest of the country,” said Phillips, “but this is the wave of the future. After all, how often do you meet someone in Michigan or Brooklyn who moved there from L.A.?”
Some demographers have argued that intermarriage is a net gain for Judaism; more people “convert in” than “opt out.” Phillips pooh-poohed the notion. “It could be true, in strictly numerical terms. But most Christian partners don’t convert. And mixed couples who claim to be raising their kids as Jews rarely belong to synagogues or live in Jewish neighborhoods, so it isn’t entirely clear what they mean.”
“What can we do?” asked Julie. “I mean, how can we be sure that our children will marry Jews and have Jewish children?”
“There are five main factors that influence a decision like that,” said Phillips. “First, raise them in a Jewish neighborhood. Second, send them to Jewish camps in the summer. Third, give them an economic status that will allow them to interact with other Jews on a social level. Fourth, set an example of Jewish commitment at home. And fifth, when the time comes, send them to a college with a high percentage of Jewish students.”
“And if we do all that, what are the chances of them marrying Jews?” asked Alan.
“Ah, fifty-fifty,” said Phillips.
“That’s it?” asked Julie. “Fifty percent?”
“Statistically, yes,” said Phillips, and Mirsky nodded in confirmation.
“So what you’re saying is that the Jews are eventually going to disappear in America,” said Julie in a dismayed and somewhat angry voice. “You’re saying that we don’t have a chance.”
“No, I’m not saying that,” said Phillips dispassionately. “What you’ll have in the future is a very intense core of Jews, surrounded by a thin outer layer. And the inner core will be a visible reminder to the outer core of what Judaism is really all about.”
“It’s a function of life in America, that’s all,” Mirsky added. “There’s no reason to view people who marry out of the faith, or even leave it, as defectors. That’s unfair. The policy goal of the Jewish establishment in America over the past fifty years has been full integration into society—and assimilation and intermarriage are just logical consequences of that policy. Imagine how you would react if some Lutheran group sent out flyers saying: DON’T MARRY JEWS. The whole community would be up in arms. The Jews in the United States today are just getting what they always wanted.”
Later, at home, Julie and Alan pondered what they had heard at lunch. They are well-informed and deeply involved in the Jewish community, and yet they reacted to Phillips’s and Mirsky’s statistics with something like shock. They feel an obligation to pass along their Jewish heritage and they talked about taking measures—parochial schools, a summer in Israel, something …
Julie and Alan are concerned Jewish parents. But for them, and tens of thousands like them, their children’s Jewish future is not quite the first priority. If they lived in a place with bad schools or unsafe streets, they would move; they are committed to getting their sons, safe and sound, into good colleges and well-paid professions. Preserving their children’s Jewish heritage is important to them, too—but not important enough for them to sacrifice their American life-style. Naturally they hope for the best, but they are emotionally reconciled to the possibility—unthinkable even two generations ago—that their own grandchildren may not be Jews.
And yet, beyond the statistics and the projections, beyond the loss of culture and literacy, beyond the evidence of decline and the logic of demise, lies a great imponderable. America has formed the minds and lives of its Jews, but it has not quite changed their hearts.
All across the country I met people with American lives and Jewish hearts—Macy B. Hart, obsessed with the dying Dixie diaspora; Harvey Wasserman, the Buddhist with Jewish parental karma; Jody Kommel, who lives in Grosse Pointe with a Jewish star around her neck; a woman in Jacksonville who made her Christian husband buy a home in a Jewish neighborhood because she doesn’t feel comfortable around gentiles; the man in Florida, married to a Mennonite woman, who is raising his small son to speak Yiddish; the inmates of Graterford Prison, who raise money for orphans in Netanya; the yuppie mystics in the Hollywood midrash class; the young leaders of the UJA who can’t understand their love for Israel; Marty Gaynor, the Jewish cop with a yarmulke under his crash helmet.
As Americans, these people have nothing in common; but as Jews, they share something they often cannot articulate, even to themselves. It is an emotional tie—to places they have never lived, a history they barely remember, other Jews they have never met. For some this feeling is an intense and constant flame; for others, an occasional and mystifying flicker. But when it occurs it is undeniable and powerful, a reminder that even in America, in the promised land of personal freedom and individualism, they are still, somehow, Members of the Tribe.
GLOSSARY
Aliyah Literally “ascending.” The Hebrew term for immigration to Israel.
Ba’al tshuva A newly orthodox Jew.
Bikur Holim In Hebrew, literally “sick visit.” Such visits are considered a religious obligation.
Bocher The Hebrew and Yiddish word for boy.
Bris The Yiddish term for the circumcision ceremony (in Hebrew, “Brit” or “Brith”).
Chabad A Chasidic group, also known as Lubavitcher Chasidim.
Chai In Hebrew, “life.”
Chanukah Jewish Feast of Lights, commemorating the victory of the Maccabees over the Greeks.
Chasid (plural Chasidim) A member of a Chasidic group.
Chavura movement A movement in the late 1960s and 1970s by young Jews trying to establish smaller, independent, more egalitarian and more participatory Jewish congregations, either independently or within synagogues.
Cheder Literally “room,” a cheder is a primary school for observant Jewish children.
Cholent A traditional Sabbath dish usually made with meat and beans.
Eretz Israel Hebrew for “the land of Israel.”
Felafel Fried chick-pea balls common in Israel and the Middle East.
Glatt An especially strict form of kashrut.
Hadassah American women’s Zionist organization.
Halacha The body of Jewish law and commandments.
Havdalah The prayer service that marks th
e end of the Sabbath and the beginning of the week.
Humos A chick-pea dip common in Israel and the Middle East.
Kaddish The Hebrew prayer for the dead.
Kashrut (also spelled Kashruth) The Jewish dietary laws.
Klezmer music Eastern European Jewish music, often played at weddings or other festive occasions.
Kotel The Western Wall of the Temple in Jerusalem, also known as “the Wailing Wall.”
Kreplach Jewish ravioli.
Lag B’Omer The twenty-third day of the counting of the omer; the only day between Passover and Pentecost on which observant Jews may marry.
Latke A potato pancake usually eaten at Chanukah.
Le’hitraot In Hebrew, “see you again.”
Makher Yiddish for “big shot.”
Marrano An underground Jew. The term is usually associated with Jews forcibly converted to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition.
Mazel Luck.
Midrash A body of literature containing rabbinic interpretations of biblical texts.
Mensch A Yiddish term for an honorable and decent person.
Meshuggeh Crazy.
Mikvah Ritual bath.
Mincha Afternoon prayers.
Minyan Hebrew term for the ten-man worship quorum (Conservative and Reform Jews count women as well).
Mitzvah In Hebrew, literally a commandment. A mitzvah is a religious obligation.
Ner tamid Hebrew for “eternal light”; a light that hangs over the ark in synagogues.
Nosh In Yiddish, a snack.
Payes The Yiddish pronunciation of “payot” or sidelocks worn by Chasidic Jews.
Purim Holiday commemorating the salvation of the Jews of ancient Persia from a genocidal enemy.
