The Intellectual Assault on Israel and Pro-Israel Advocacy: How the American Jewish Community Should React
American support for Israel historically has rested on four main pillars: the high esteem Jews enjoy within American society; the strong base of Christianity within American culture; the kinship Americans have for a fellow democracy; and, especially since 9/11, the common foes that confront both America and Israel. None of these pillars may be taken for granted; nor are they necessarily unequivocal.
Bosnian Jewry: A Small Community Meets a Unique Challenge During the 1990s War
During wars, Jewish communities often become scapegoats and victims of the combatants. In the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the early 1990s, the opposite happened. The Jewish community in the country’s capital Sarajevo extended humanitarian services indiscriminately to people of all religions and was respected by the three warring parties, Muslims, Orthodox Serbs, and Roman Catholic Croats. At present, six Jewish communities remain in Bosnia-Herzegovina with a total of a thousand members.
The Orthodox Union and Its Challenges
The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (UOJCA), or Orthodox Union (OU), was founded in 1898. Currently the organization has approximately seven hundred American and Canadian synagogues as its constituents.
Christian-Jewish Relations in the Netherlands
The establishment of the state of Israel—and not the Jewish suffering during the Shoah—has catalyzed in the Netherlands a serious rethinking of the relationship of Christianity to Judaism. The theology that Christians had replaced Jews as the “new” Israel was belied by the reempowered Jewish polity in the Land.
The Future of Reform Jewry
In a general social context marked by intermarriage and cultural homogeneity among Jews, the Reform movement in the United States is growing rapidly, with almost nine hundred congregations having over 1.5 million members. In 2006, about fifty thousand new members joined Reform congregations. When American Jews under the age of forty affiliate, a large plurality join the Reform movement.
Post-Soviet Jewry on the Cusp of Its Third Decade – Part 1
Demographically, post-Soviet Jewry has seen an overall decline resulting from assimilation, intermarriage, low fertility, high mortality, and emigration of younger age cohorts. Some demographers believe that less than 500,000 Jews remain in the post-Soviet states. An intermarriage rate that some view as exceeding 80 percent creates complex situations for those Jewish groups that prefer to confine their programs to halachically Jewish individuals
Jewish Life in Independent Ukraine: Fifteen Years After the Soviet Collapse* (Part 2)
It is difficult to be optimistic about Jewish communal life in Ukraine. The Jewish population is declining rapidly and assimilation continues among those who remain. The intermarriage rate is extraordinarily high, and attractive gateways to Jewish community life are limited. Current Jewish programs engage a segment of the younger Jewish population and more of the very old; very few attractive Jewish opportunities exist for well-educated urban Jews in the broad age range between university and retirement, the cohort from which leadership is drawn. It is doubtful that more than 15 percent of Jews in this age cohort in major cities are active in any aspect of Jewish life.
Jewish Life in Independent Ukraine: Fifteen Years After the Soviet Collapse (Part 1)
Estimates of the number of Jews living in contemporary Ukraine vary from 100,000 to 200,000. All observers believe that the Jewish population is in rapid demographic decline. It is likely to decrease even further in coming years due to a low birthrate, intermarriage and assimilation, and a lack of attractive gateways into Jewish life.
Is There a Future for Jews in Switzerland?
Swiss Jewry seems to be set for steady decline. There are today some eighteen thousand Jews in Switzerland—the same number as in 1900, whereas the general population has doubled since then. Assimilation and emigration, mainly to Israel, have reduced the Jewish population.
Jewish numbers were never high in Switzerland although many Jewish communities existed there in the Middle Ages. A pattern began in 1348 when many cities in the territories of what was to become the Swiss Confederacy murder
Turkish Jewry Today
The Turkish Jewish community is one of the oldest of the Diaspora, dating back to the Roman Empire. Ninety percent of Turkish Jews live in Istanbul and most of the remaining 10 percent in Izmir. Demographically it is an aging community with a steady trend of emigration, in the past to Israel and nowadays mainly to the United States.
How the Status of American Jewish Women Has Changed Over the Past Decades
There have been major developments in the role of Jewish women in the United
States over the past four decades. The changes are undeniably related to what is
happening in American society at large. They have, however, a specifically Jewish_
flavor and take place in many areas across Jewish life. One among many is the
opening of the study of rabbinics and classical Jewish texts to women.
Jewish Education in the United States: Improving but Still a Long Way to Go
Jewish education in the United States seems to be improving. Engaged Jews have increasing educational opportunities. With those not engaged, however, the community tends to lose ground.
The Chief Rabbi’s View on Jews and Poland
At least twenty thousand Jews live in Poland. The two leading organizations, the Union of Jewish Communities and the Cultural and Social Association of Jews, each have about two thousand members
The Jewish Community of Australia and Its Challenges
The internal challenges for the community include preserving Jewish identity in a society that offers numerous choices for an individual’s self-identification, understanding and addressing the particular needs of newer arrivals and their place in the broader Jewish community, and providing for the financial and other requirements of an aging population and of Australian Jews who suffer from social disadvantage.
Canadian Jewry Today: Portrait of a Community in the Process of Change
The Canadian Jewish community is now one of the more significant contemporary diaspora Jewish communities, numbering approximately 364,000. It is one of the few communities that is growing demographically. The most important trend in Canadian Jewry in the past decades is the rise of Toronto to preeminent status in terms of Jewish population and the concomitant decline of Montreal.
