The Fading American Jew

"Who is a Jew?" once went a line in comedy.  Answer: The person who has Jewish grandchildren.

But, jokes aside, American Jews and their values are under threat as never before.  To understand this it helps to have a point of reference and our Jewish cousins in Canada help us here very nicely.  "The Canadian Jewish community (nearing 400,000, now ranks as the fourth largest in the world, after Israel, the United States, and France".)  This per Michael Medved writing in the Nov. '13 issue of Commentary.  By many common metrics - ritual observance, visits to Israel, Jewish education, marrying other Jews, etc. - Canadian Jews are more Jewish than American Jews.

Medved suggests this might be because the Canadian Jews are less assimilated than American Jews.  The Canadian Jewish families came to their country some 30 or 40 years later than typical American clans  (This is in part because Canada remained more open to Jewish refugees in the days just before the Holocaust.)  Today, one in every four Canadian Jews was born abroad.  In the U.S., that figure is one in ten.

A reported 74 % of Canadian Jews have visited Israel.  Less than a third of American Jews have made this trip.  "It makes sense that those who view traveling to Jerusalem as a personal priority will also prove more likely to consider support for Israel an important factor" in their various political decisions.

Then too the environment in which Canadian Jews find themselves is more threatening than what American Jews find here in America.  In Canada, Muslims make up more than 3 percent of the electorate (nearly 4 times their percentage of the presidential vote in the U.S. in 2012).  Since Muslims amount to less than 1% of the U.S. population, American Jews can more easily disregard the political role of Islamic communities.

There is one other aspect to this comparison of American Jews and Canadian Jews worthy of note and that is the Evangelical Christian factor.  Despite their proven record of support for Israel, American Jews are generally very fearful of the Evangelicals.  It can be argued that this helps explain why Ronald Reagan, the most ardently Zionist president to that point in history, lost 67% of Jewish voters to Walter Mondale in '84.  Reagan enjoyed the massive support of the Evangelicals.

Fear of Christian power and influence helped guarantee that leaders like Reagan and the second Bush would find their love for the Jewish people unrequited.  But to Canadian Jews, Evangelical Christians are far less threatening.  In Canada, they make up less than 7% of the population.  (In America, 26% of the people queried in exit polls after the '12 presidential elections identified themselves as "as white evangelical or born-again Christians.")

The irony is that in Canada, their Prime Minister, Harper, is an Evangelical.  He is also one of Israel's staunchest defenders.  As a Jew, let me suggest that perhaps we American Jews might want to reconsider our position regarding Evangelicals.