Tion of Jewish Philanthropies Acknowledges with Deep Gratitude the Splended Contribution Made by Mr

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Commission on Synagogue delations of the Federa- tion of Jewish Philanthropies acknowledges with deep gratitude the splended contribution made by Mr. Edward Isaacs, Vice President of the Federation, and a group of his friends which made the Conference on Intermarriage possible.

The Commission also wishes to express its profound gratitude to Moe and Louis Mark of the Supreme Printing Co., Inc. for their generous gift of printing this volume in memory of their beloved parents,

HARRY MARK

MAMIE MARK irrn 'nx n m ypD'a Our appreciation is extended to Mr. Jack J. Zurofsky for all his help during The Conference and in preparing the proceedings for publication.

RAISBI DAVID I. GOLOVENSKY President, Commission on Synagogue Relations

v TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION i Dr. Benjamin Z. Kreitman, Spiritual Leader, Brooklyn Jewish Center

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS V

TABLE OF CONTENTS vii

INTERMARRIAGE FROM A RELIGIO-ETHNIC PERSPECTIVE .... 1 Speaker—Dr. Mordecai M. Kaplan, Founder of the Re- constructionist Movement Discussant—Rabbi Herschel Schacter, Spiritual Leader, Mosholu Jewish Center 10 Summary of Discussion 19

INTERMARRIAGE FROM A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE 27 Speaker—Nathan Goldberg, Professor of Sociology, Yeshiva University Discussant—Bernard Resnikoff, Director, Ramah Com- mission, United Synagogue of America 59 Summary of Discussion 67

INTERMARRIAGE—THE CRUCIAL COLLEGE YEARS 77 Speaker—Dr. Alfred Jospe, Director, Program and Re- sources, B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundations Discussant—Dr. Morton Teicher, Dean of the Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University 100 Summary of Discussion 104

INTERMARRIAGE—FROM A CASEWORK PERSPECTIVE 115 Speaker—San ford Sherman, Associate Director, Jewish Family Service Discussant—Rabbi Bernard Kligfeld, Spiritual Leader, Temple Emanu-El of Long Beach 128 Summary of Discussion 134

PROPOSALS FOR ACTION 137 Dr. Robert Gordis, Spiritual Leader, Temple Beth El of Rockaway Park

EPILOGUE: AN AGENDA FOR TOMORROW 159 Graenum Berger, Consultant on Community Centers and Camps, Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York vii INTERMARRIAGE—THE CRUCIAL COLLEGE YEARS

By DR. ALFRED JOSPE

Few issues in Jewish life have, in recent years, been discussed with the same intensity of concern and sense of crisis as has the problem of intermarriage and mixed marriage among American Jews today. As you know, several recent studies and articles have fanned this concern, among them especially Thomas Morgan's description of "The Vanishing American Jew," in which the author reported that new studies reveal a significant loss of Jewish identity and an increasing rate of intermarriage; that Judaism is losing 70% of the children born to mixed couples; that American Jews are scarcely reproducing themselves because of a low birth rate; and that we may therefore fade from 2.9% to 1.6% of the United States population by the year 2000. Morgan's primary roadmap on his hasty and superficial trip through the landscape of Jewish identity in America today was Dr. Erich Rosenthal's well-known analysis of various studies of Jewish intermarriage in the U. S. which had been published in the 1963 edition of the American Jewish Yearbook and in which Dr. Rosenthal makes three points which are relevant to our discussion today: first, the rate of intermarriage of Jews is far higher than has generally been assumed; second, a college education tends to increase this rate; and third, the level of intermarriage is bound to rise with increasing length of secular schooling. Indeed, in the third generation, college attendance seems to double the intermarriage rate. The claim that intermarriage may be on the increase especially among college students is also supported by the results of other studies, among them, for instance, Albert

[77] 78 INTER MARRIAGE

Gordon's recent book on Intermarriage, whose data suggest that there is an increasing readiness among college students to approve of any form of intermarriage except racial.

It is primarily this finding which has come as a severe shock to parents and educators. The suspicion is spreading that a university is a "faith-trap" which will weaken Jewish family life and corrode the survival loyalties of our young people. This fear has aroused not only deep concern but also anguished outcries about "the alienation of our Jewish college students," angry denunciations of university life as a whole and of the supposed failure of Jewish educational agencies on and off campus to "stem the tide of intermarriage among our students," and numerous well- intentioned but often also quite quixotic and far too sim- plicistic or publicity-seeking proposals designed to remedy the situation. This concern is of course understandable and justified, especially when we consider the enormous proportion of the Jewish college-age population that actually is in college today. In 1915, when the first though unhappily inadequate attempt was made to determine the number of Jewish college students, there were an estimated 7,300 Jewish college students in America. By 1919, their number had doubled and we had nearly 15,000 Jewish students in our colleges and universities. By 1935, their number had reached 105,000. It increased to 200,000 in 1950 and, at present, we have a Jewish college population of about 275,000 students — representing at least 70 and perhaps as many as 80% of the total Jewish population of college- age (18-24). If a college education creates a predisposition towards intermarriage, our losses can be overwhelming. Unfortunately, the issues are being discussed with far more heat than knowledge of the data or understanding of the complexity of the problem. The fact is that, despite the significant growth of pertinent research, our ignorance THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 79 concerning the essential data and trends continues to be encyclopedic. One reason is that there is still a vast array of unre- searched issues. Joseph Maier has outlined most of them in his helpful chapter in the symposium on Intermarriage and Jewish Life. We do not know how many American Jews marry outside their faith and what the factors are which affect the intermarriage rate. Nor do we know adequately in what social context intermarriage occurs, whether the size of the community or residential proximity make a difference or are variables themselves, what the influence of a youngster's education and early associations may be, how strong the Jewish identification of those who interdate or intermarry is, and whether such dating is limited to those who have no intense Jewish feelings or background or can be found also among Jewishly conscious young people, etc. As Maier said, whether you draw a reassuring or discouraging conclusion from the data depends on the studies you select. We have even less information about the extent to which intermarriage may occur on the campus. One can study the patterns of interdating on the campus but this tells us little about the extent of intermarriage on the campus. We simply do not know how many Jewish students marry or intermarry while they are at college. Despite our persistent efforts in Hillel and despite an unparalleled community- wide concern with college students, none of the frequently excellent community surveys which have been conducted in recent years incorporated questions which could have given us greater insight into the problems and behavior of this age group. Whatever evidence we have indicates that college students actually do not marry as frequently as seems to be assumed. In Albert Gordon's study of 5407 students— primarily undergraduates—at 40 colleges and universities he found that only 6% were married; and the Population Reference Bureau discovered that while 25% of all college graduates this year were married, four out of every 80 INTER MARRIAGE five of these married students were men and that on the average a college career delays a girl's marriage by about four years. The Bureau therefore issued a hot tip for worried parents who hope their daughters will stop, look and listen before taking an impulsive teenage plunge into matrimony: Get her into college fast (or, to paraphrase Hamlet: Get thee to a college! Go!) In brief, college is the place where students meet and date, but not necessarily where they legally mate. Only a small number of students get married while they are in school. Nevertheless, their college experiences, may of course, be among the significant factors that contribute to their later choice of a partner. II What then do we know about the problem of intermarriage on the campus ? Although the quality of our research data vary significantly, the consensus is that the rate of intermarriage among our young people or at least their proclivity to intermarriage has been increasing steadily. Albert Gordon, in the study I have already mentioned, found a general readiness to approve of all forms of intermarriage except racial. While 91% of his respondents, would not favor marriage with a person of another color, only 50% would object to marriage with a person of another faith. By implication then, the remaining 50% would have no serious objections to a religious intermarriage. However, Gordon's data present some difficulties. First, he himself realizes that what he has tabulated is not an actual record of intermarriage but merely a survey of student opinion concerning intermarriage. Yet we know that there can be a vast gap between the verbal expression of a view and the action a person takes when he makes an important decision affecting his own life. Secondly, Gordon does not isolate the percentage of the Jewish students who said they are prepared to approve intermarriage. Hence we do not know to what extent his data sub- stantiate his claim that the readiness of students to intermarry has increased. THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 81

The impression that intermarriage on the campus, or at least a more open attitude to intermarriage, is on the increase is, however, supported by the experiences of Hil- lel directors in most parts of the country. We do not have conclusive statistical data, but many, though by no means all, of our 80 full-time men on campuses across the country report that the number of young people who come to them for counsel or help in connection with their plans to intermarry is larger, and sometimes substantially larger, than, let me say, ten years ago. These reports have significance in at least one respect. They are not based on what a student says he might do in response to an attitude question- naire ; they indicate that there seems to be a growing number of young Jews who have reached the decision to intermarry or are about to make it. Nevertheless, these impressions, too, must be treated with caution. The number of Jewish students who con- template or consummate an intermarriage on the college campus is probably larger than these reports indicate. As far as Hillel directors or similar university personnel are concerned, a definite process of pre-selection is at work. We know only those young people who come to us because they still are not quite sure, or need advice for themselves, or seek our help in their efforts to convince their parents of the Tightness of their decision. Those young people who have definitely made up their mind or have no problem—or think they have none—or do not want our counsel or want to move out of the group, no longer come to us. Conse- quently, the number of intermarriages on the campus or at least originating on the campus is probably far larger than the number of cases which come to our attention. Let me, however, also add that we do not know whether this is a relative or absolute increase. The fact that more students come to the Hillel directors for counsel in such matters today than did ten or twenty years ago does not necessarily mean that the percentage has increased. It might merely be a reflection of the enormous increase in Jewish enrollment in most institutions. 82 INTER MARRIAGE

The only source so far which gives us reliable data about the correlation between intermarriage rate and college attendance is Eosenthal's study. Those of Rosenthal's findings which are of particular significance for our discussion today are (a) that the rate of intermarriage increases as the proportion of native-born Jews increases, and (b) that a college education tends to raise the level of intermarriage even further. In fact, as you know, he finds that, in the third generation, among native-born children of native-born parents, college attendance seems to double the intermarriage rate. While 17.9% of this generation as a whole intermarry, the percentage of all men who were or are college students and had married non-Jews, rose to 37%. Hence, Rosenthal concludes that there is a causal relationship between college education and the rate of intermarriage and that we must expect the level of intermarriage to rise further with increasing length of secular schooling.

Rosenthal's thesis opens up a new dimension in our understanding of the problem. Nevertheless, his treatment of the data and his conclusions raise several questions which merit further analysis and clarification. Let me register four caveats.

(1) As I have just indicated, he found that college attendance seems to double the intermarriage rate in the third generation: 37% of all men who were college students intermarried as compared with an intermarriage rate of 17.9% for this generation as a whole. But Rosenthal does not tell us why he singles out men and omits women who had gone to college. The rate for men is, of course, significant in itself. Yet if women as well as men had been included, the total rate would have been substantially lower than the rate for men alone, in view of the previously mentioned finding of the Population Refer- ence Bureau that fewer of the girls who attend college get married than of those who do not attend and that girls who attend college marry considerably later than those who do not. THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 83

(2) I have a second reservation. Rosenthal does not tell us—and this is a serious omission—how many members of this entire third generation had actually been college students and how the percentage of intermarried college students in the third generation compares with the percentage of intermarried college students in the first and second generations. Without these data there is no meaningful way to discover whether there is a trend as he claims, and what it might signify. We know that only a very small percentage of the first, the immigrant generation, had gone to college, but that the proportion of the Jewish college-age population which actually went to college grew steadily in the second generation until today when, according to the latest estimates, at least 70% and perhaps as many as 80% of this age group in the Jewish population—of the third and perhaps fourth generations—actually are enrolled in college. Hence there seems to be no warrant to Rosenthal's conclusion that "native-born persons attain a maximum rate of intermarriage... at the college level." Disregard the fact which I have already mentioned that most students do not marry at the college level and that the formulation is therefore somewhat misleading. My point is that Rosen- thal's own data do not justify his conclusion. All that can reasonably be said is that, inasmuch as about 70 or 75% of the third generation were or are college students, it is inevitable that a high proportion of persons who attended college must be found among the 17.9% of this generation who intermarried. This statement by itself does not yet justify the conclusion that it is a college education which contributes to the rise of the intermarriage rate. (3) Nor do Rosenthal's data permit a clear answer to the question whether a college education is the major or only an incidental factor or whether it plays any role in a young person's decision to intermarry. As I have just indicated, the fact that a substantial number of intermarried persons are found among people who went to college does not yet justify the conclusion that it is a college education 84 INTER MARRIAGE

as such which raises the level of the intermarriage rate. A college education may be only one factor, albeit an important one, in the development of an individual's personality and in the process by which the psychological, cultural and social barriers between Jew and non-Jew are lowered. The process of retention or alienation starts long before the student enters college—in the home, in school, in high-school, in the synagogue, in the presence or absence of a vital and meaningful Jewish milieu from which the child emerges. The college experience may fortify, modify or substantially change a young person's attitudes. It does not create them. Alienation, where it manifests itself, usually has its roots in the experiences of a young person in the 17 or 18 years before he enters college.

(4) Lastly, I think we need a good deal of further research before we can decide whether Rosenthal's findings are generally applicable. They differ, often significantly, from the results and implications of other studies which examine the attitudes of Jewish college students towards intermarriage. When you ask students what they think of intermarriage (e.g. whether they approve or disapprove of it), you will find that many, even a majority, approve of it. They have little or no intellectual reservation about intermarriage as such. If they seem to object to it, it is usually less on grounds of religious conviction than because they know or fear that their parents or peers would disapprove of it. Some surveys of student attitudes seem to support Ro- senthal's data, among them, for instance, the study conducted by Hershel Shansky at Columbia University in 1953 when he found that 35% of his respondents approved of marriage between Jews and non-Jews, while 43% were neutral and 22% opposed. However, surveys of this kind also tend to reveal a significant ambivalence on the part of many students, as Richard Israel, our Hillel Director at Yale, has pointed out in a paper before the Rabbinical As- sembly in 1963. Even though many students at Yale have few if any intellectual reservations about intermarriage and THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 85 would approve of it in principle, almost all of them resist and indeed resent the notion that their children might be raised as Christians. The conclusion is possible that their endorsement of intermarriage is largely verbal, intellectual and detached and does not necessarily reveal the actual course they would follow when it comes to a personal decision on their part. This assumption is supported by other studies in which students were asked not whether they approve or disapprove of intermarriage in abstract principle but whether they themselves were prepared to intermarry. Spinbad and Maier found that the resistance to intermarriage among Jewish students was considerably higher than among Catholics and Protestants, in that order, and that of the Jewish students in their study only 10% indicated they would be prepared to marry outside their faith while 84% were definitely opposed and 6% were doubtful. A Hillel study of the actual dating habits of the Jewish members of the senior classes at two major universities shows similar trends. Please note that we did not ask the graduating seniors whether they would interdate but whether and to what extent they actually had interdated during their four years at college. At one university (an Ivy League college), 19% of the Jewish seniors said they had dated non-Jewish girls frequently during their college career, 46% said they had done so occasionally, and 35% never, while the corresponding percentages at a large Eastern state university were 13% frequently, 33% occasionally and 54% never. In response to the question whether the most frequent dates had been with Jewish or non-Jewish partners, the answers at the Ivy League College were that 79% had been mostly with Jews, 20% mostly with non-Jews and 1% equal, while the corresponding figures at the Eastern state university were 95% most frequently with Jews and only 4% with non- Jews. These data seem to support my feeling that Rosenthal's study, though it is of crucial importance because of the 86 INTER MARRIAGE way in which it has opened up new layers of our understanding of intermarriage, makes a number of claims which are not adequately substantiated by the data on which they are based. Further research is required to clarify the issues.

Ill

But after I have registered these reservations, I still believe Rosenthal has put his finger on a vitally important aspect of the problem. There is a correlation between intermarriage and college life. Intermarriage as such, like marriage, may not occur with high frequency among undergraduates on the campus. But their college experiences seem to increase their predisposition for intermarriage. To put it differently: many of the conditions and factors which are said to contribute to the rise of the intermarriage rate in general — urbanization, horizontal and vertical mobility, propinquity, a society that is becoming increasingly egalitarian, rebellion against background or rejection of family, the growth of mass communication and the subsequent lowering of cultural and social barriers — they all operate on the campus, too. But some of them find their sharpest definition in the campus community. Let me isolate some of the factors.

(1) The campus provides an extraordinary opportunity for the multiplication of human contacts, as a result of the enormous and in many instances explosively rapid growth of our college population over the past 75 years. Between 1890 and 1960, the population of the United States tripled but, during the same period, the number of college students increased nearly 25 times and the number of institutions of higher learning rose from 998 to 2008. In 1900, only 4% of the college-age group attended colleges and universities. Today nearly 30%, that is, almost one out of every three of all college-age Americans actually are in college. But in the Jewish population, at least 70%-, that is, nearly three out of every four young people of college age, are enrolled in institutions of higher learning. THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 87

The number of women students has grown even more rapidly than that of men. Between 1957 and 1962, the enrollment of men increased by 30%, that of women by nearly 51%. A woman gets more education and more women get educated today than ever before. Consequently, increasingly large numbers of young people of varying faiths and backgrounds are being thrown together more intimately and with greater persistence at the college level than at any other time of their lives. Social life in the adult community may still be characterized by a relative social isolation of religious groups from one another. University life makes for a multiplicity and variety of continuous social contacts — students meet in classes and extracurricular activities; they eat together, play together, study together, live together in the same dormitory. Their opportunities for social intercourse and thus the circle of their marital choices are enormously enlarged. This multiplication of contacts takes place despite the fact that social and racial discrimination still exists on many campuses. Gordon feels that the policies of Greek Letter organizations have gradually become so extensively liberalized that we can expect a greater degree of social intermingling even in fraternities and sororities. I do not share his opinion. De jure policies of equality neither guar- antee nor imply de facto social acceptance. Many fraternities are still discriminatory. "Only token integration has been achieved. Students and faculty alike meet cordially in classrooms and laboratory but then retire to their mutually exclusive Jewish and gentile worlds. Class and social distinctions continue to exist. For many students, the existence of such mutual exclusive social worlds serves as a real deterrent against choosing a marital partner of another faith. Yet we also know that the very existence of . . . the walls poses the invitation and challenge to scale them."

(2) A second factor that manifests itself especially in the academic milieu is the fierce desire for independence 88 INTER MARRIAGE from authority that has traditionally characterized college students. Harold Webster has used the phrase "rebellious independence" to describe the general personality pattern underlying the significant and often rapid value shifts and personality changes which occur when a youngster enters college — away from home for the first time and, for the first time, able to experience freedom from restraint, to break away from what most adolescents feel are the strang- ulating ties of home, school, synagogue or church, to make new contacts, to encounter new ideas and try them on for size—to flex his muscles intellectually, emotionally, socially. This break-away excursion is not only encouraged but accelerated by the college atmosphere in various ways — by its vigorous insistence upon intellectual freedom and personal independence from outside restraints; by its general mood of scepticism and academic relativism; by the demand for proof, verification and logical consistency on the part of a teacher or argumentative fellow students; by its emphasis on "sophistication" and a more "realistic," that is, critical attitude toward the institutional authorities of family, state and religion. These changes frequently lead to a questioning of precisely those values, beliefs and practices which we originally take on authority from family or culture. In fact, religious values and views are usually the most visible and, hence, most accessible and vulnerable targets for the expression of these rebellious impulses. As young Jews begin to question their background and family values, the feeling rises that the barriers between them and non-Jews are meaningless. They begin to move out of the world of their parents and, possibly, into contacts which may lead to intermarriage, not necessarily because they reject their parents but because they do not find much in their parents' world that would hold them to Jewish life. (3) And here we arc confronted by what I think is perhaps the most significant single factor which effects the Jewish identity of the college student and his attitude towards intermarriage. The Judaism which a young person brings along when he enters college frequently tends to THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 89 evaporate under the pressure of mature intellectual challenge, the exposure to new ideas, and the often exciting discovery of new human contacts at the university. As the student is thrust into the college atmosphere, he frequently discovers that whatever he may know of his religion does not seem to present a live intellectual option and that the Judaism he has acquired at home and in religious school rarely addresses itself to his deepest needs and ultimate concerns as a human being—at the very moment when, for the first time, he is removed from his previous intellectual, emotional and social context and is exposed to an entirely new world of ideas and to contact with people of different races, cultures, religions and social classes. During the past three or four decades, a striking change has occurred in the attitudes of Jewish students towards their Jewishness. Thirty or forty years ago, young Jews were largely "in flight." The campus population in those days was overwhelmingly non-Jewish. The Jewish student body was small, made up largely of sons of immigrants or immigrants themselves. The lines of demarcation between Jews and Christians on and off campus were sharply defined. In this setting, being Jewish meant being strange. It meant the experience of Judaism as a handicap in one's effort to gain an American identity. It meant not being wholly at home in the world or the campus community. Hence numerous young Jews were in flight from their Jewish identity. Intermarriage was one of the avenues of escape from the penalties of Jewish identity and of ascendancy into the coveted stratum of economic advance- ment and social acceptance. The campus situation has changed considerably since those days. Today's students are no longer in flight. There are of course still some escapists; most are not. They are second, third, and even fourth generation Americans. They have a sense of security. They feel at home here. Being Jewish has generally become an acceptable identity on campus. Virtually all student studies indicate that most Jewish students today affirm their Jewishness without 90 INTER MARRIAGE noticeable embarrassment or self-consciousness. But in most instances they are profoundly ignorant of what they affirm. Hence "our central problem on the campus today is 110 longer that Jewish students try to escape from Judaism. The problem is that Judaism is escaping them." For many students being Jewish is neither a problem nor a challenge. It is simply a condition of their lives. "It does not engage their minds even where it superficially engages their hearts." For many though certainly not for all students, Judaism is primarily the context of their social location. It is not, or not yet—and may never be—the context of their religious, cultural, or spiritual location. Hence our greatest Jewish problem today may well be the fact that many young Jews at the university have no Jewish problem at all. One reason for this development is the shattering amount of Jewish ignorance and illiteracy among many young Jews. It may be debatable whether Jewish knowledge is a reliable index of a person's Jewish loyalty and identity. A man may be ignorant of his Jewish heritage yet have a profound love affair with the Jewish God or people; vice versa, Jewish literacy is no automatic safeguard against indifference, neglect, or even apostasy in thought or act. Nevertheless, Jewish knowledge can often be an index to a person's concern and involvement in Jewish life. Hence we tested in one of our studies, among other factors, the Jewish knowledge of an entire freshman generation at three schools—the knowledge they brought along as they entered school. The findings will hardly surprise you. There is a shattering amount of Jewish illiteracy. It is a depressing indictment of the failure of Jewish education on the pre-college school level. We asked, for instance, "What festival do we customarily associate with the name of the Maccabees!" Only 17% of nearly 400 incoming Jewish freshmen at the three schools were able to identify Chanukkah correctly. We asked the same group to attempt to name any three Hebrew prophets. At one of the schools, 16% could answer the question, at the other two schools THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 91

11% and 14% respectively. Only 13% of the freshmen in the Midwest could identify the Shulchan Arukh in any way, for instance, as a source of religious law for traditional Jews, though I should add that the percentage was considerably higher at one of the New England schools. Above all, however, we must come to grips with another fact. Numerous students have intellectual difficulties with Judaism as a religion. They know there is a religious heritage in Judaism. But they don't know what to do with it intellectually. What they know of Judaism is not relevant to their thinking and needs. The assumptions, affirmations, and practices of traditional Judaism pose an intellectual and social conflict for them. Some of our most sensitive and thoughtful students feel that Judaism or, to be more precise, the Judaism they know, simply does not address itself to their concerns and predicaments as human beings in our time. Even if they wanted to, they cannot harmonize the Judaism they were taught in synagogue and religious schools or experienced in the community, with the findings of modern science and the humanities as taught in high school and college. And here we are confronted by what I think is one of the deepest predicaments of Jewish college students with regard to their Jewish identity. Contrary to the persistent claims of some people who think we can discover signs of a religious revival on campus, every study I know shows a decrease in the religiousness of college students. As they move from their freshman to their senior year, they become much more uncertain about the need for religious beliefs as a basis for a philosophy of life and of the existence of a personal God than they were as freshmen. They become less inclined to believe in the existence of a soul, of im- mortality, or in the divine inspiration of the Bible as the word of God, and they become far more inclined to believe that there is a genuine and probably irreconcilable conflict between science and religion. This looks like a decline in religiousness. But what has happened is something entirely different. The student, 92 INTER MARRIAGE during his college years, tends to lose not his religion but his childhood notions about religion. Thousands of students come to our universities every year with a "pediatric Judaism," with religious notions which were arrested on the 8th or 9th grade level of intellectual development, but with scholastic records which permit them to matriculate in an institution of higher learning. It is this kind of naive religious notion that evaporates under the pressure of mature intellectual challenge on the college level. Many students feel unable to retain their childhood religion without doing violence to their sense of intellectual integrity. This finding is in no way contradicted by what seems to be a serious interest of numerous students in discus- sions of religious and theological issues. The campus today is a good place for the intellectual presentation of religion. But the discussion of faith is no substitute for faith. Faith presupposes—faith, not an argument stating the advantages or disadvantages of having it. And it is their faith that is challenged by the university. The process probably begins in high school but is frequently completed in college. As a student at Harvard put it: "After a few years at Harvard, faith becomes irrelevant." The same happens elsewhere. One of our Hillel Counselors wrote us not long ago: "As a teacher of freshmen I know what a shock it is to their ideas and value system to meet the Greek mind of Periclean Athens in juxtaposition with the rabbinic mind of the Sunday school. The first impulse of the student is to jettison the rabbinic system." A generation that is concerned with Plato, Kierkegaard, Camus and Picasso, with T. S. Eliot and Bach and Stravinsky, is not likely to be satisfied with the gods of their childhood and Sunday schools. And young persons who earnestly search for a meaning in life and who are seeking to discover in their own way who they are and what they are will frequently look for more than kosher delicatessen, a horad or a record by Shoshana Damari to satisfy their search for an identity. THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 93

Jewish education has failed them by failing to communicate an image of Jewish identity which does not raise serious theological, intellectual and social difficulties. Hence some of our most sensitive and perceptive young Jewish men and women on the college campus feel they have no home in the Jewish mansion. It is pointless to accuse them of Jewish ignorance. Admittedly, many of them are ignorant of what they reject. But what matters is not that they know little about Judaism but that they do not care to discover more of what Judaism may have to offer. What matters is the fact that the Jewish community and its religious and educational institutions have not succeeded in creating, in these young hearts and minds, the image of a Judaism that has something significant to contribute to their search for spiritual dignity and moral significance. This may also be the explanation why many young Jews, among them some of our best human material, can be found in forefront of the civil rights struggle and similar battles of our time, yet turn their backs on the synagogue and other institutions in the Jewish community. They have the uneasy feeling that our synagogues (and churches) all too frequently are economically conservative, fearful of social change, paying lip service to social ideals, but shying away from redemptive action, and that they are preoccupied with trivialities and irrelevancies at a time when they ought to be more relevant than ever and speak out courageously on the issues of life and death in our time. (4) The college milieu encourages alienation in still another way—through the example which the Jewish college instructor sets or fails to set for his students, through his ability or failure to serve as a significant model. This is the fourth and last factor I want to mention. The college instructor frequently illuminates most sharply the very forces on campus that make for alienation and prepare the ground for intermarriage. Often brilliant, idea- listic, usually excellent teachers, many faculty members find it even more difficult than their students to make their intellectual and emotional peace with the Judaism and the Jewish community they know. 94 INTER MARRIAGE

Most of the reasons are obvious or emerge from the printed or oral statements in which Jewish intellectuals disclose their views of Judaism and Jewishness. Many of them, including numerous faculty members, feel that Ju- daism is spiritually as obsolescent as it is intellectually irrelevant to the knowledge and needs of twentieth century man. Formerly, many Jewish professors refused to identify themselves as Jews in order not to be identifiable and thus to avoid the penalization of prejudice and minority status. Today they don't identify with the Jewish community because they feel Judaism simply does not speak to them as a reservoir of values or source of truth that are capable of competing with other world views and commitments. They hold to what Henry Cohen, in his study of Jewish faculty members at the University of Illinois has termed "academic commitment." Their philosophy is naturalism, their method: scientific. Their faith is that the meaning of life is encompassed in the knowable universe. Their hope is that man, through his own efforts and his understanding of the consequences of his actions, can build a better world.

In this universe of discourse, Judaism, as it has traditionally been known and practiced, can have no place. At Illinois, 20% of the Jewish faculty men are married to gentile women. However, a large number of intellectuals and especially of faculty members are alienated from the Jewish community for a different reason. They feel homeless in the Jewish community as it is today. They are not escapists. They reject the nihilism and rationalizations of those of their colleagues who, in their public declarations of Ju- daism's irrelevance to man's condition today, reveal more about themselves than about Judaism. They want to be part of the Jewish community and would like to belong to its institutions for their own sake just as much as for the sake of their children's Jewish education. Yet they are repelled by the superficiality, the intellectual shallowness, and the more than occasional vulgarity that dominates much of organized Jewish life. They reject the synagogue THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 95 as a social club, its mediocrity, its frequent substitution of social entertainment values for spiritual quest, its pre- occupation with trivial concerns in a world hanging on the rim of disaster. Once again it is this feeling of homelessness in the organized Jewish community which probably is one of the most important factors that contribute to the alienation of some of our best and most creative minds. They look elsewhere for what they seem unable to find in the Jewish community. And sometimes they find the intellectual companion- ship, shared interests, and personal fulfillment they seek in a marriage to a non-Jewish partner, not only for the reasons I have already mentioned but for a reason which has rarely or never yet been publicly discussed. A young college teacher who has intermarried and to whom you can get close, may tell you that he did not marry a Jewish girl though he had initially wanted to because, having dated Jewish girls, he discovered with chagrin that, on a college instructor's salary, he would never be able to support a Jewish girl in the style which she expected and her family took for granted. What such a young man looks for in a partner and the social and economic aspirations of Jewish suburbia are worlds apart. We have no data to determine the extent of this problem. But many of us in Hillel know from personal observation and experience that this polar- ization of social values is sufficiently widespread to merit attention. IV The essential question, then, confronting the American Jew today is whether and under what conditions Jewish survival is possible in a free society. Dr. Nahum Goldmann recently formulated the issue well when he said that in the 19th century the Jew had to fight for the right to be equal while, today, in the 20th century, we have to fight for the right to be different. We know what Dr. Goldmann meant. Formerly, Jews had to battle for the right to be like all other people, to gain full acceptance as citizens whose inalienable rights as human 96 INTER MARRIAGE

beings were respected. Our struggle today is for the right to be unlike other people — to be ourselves, to maintain our Jewish distinctiveness. To be different is a right we possess in the United States. Our predicament goes much deeper. Granted that we have the right to be different, the question still remains: what is the meaning of this difference? What do we stand for when we wish to exercise our freedom to be different and distinctive? Can we make our distinctiveness meaningful? The quality of Jewish survival ultimately depends on our answers to these questions. We must face the issues realistically. The possible erosion of Jewish identity can hardly be countered by pulpit exhortations or the mailing of pamphlets to young people. Nor can the problem be reduced to a search for more effective techniques to stimu- late synagogue attendance or membership in Jewish organizations. Techniques are important. Ultimately, however, our efforts to strengthen the Jewish literacy and loyalties of our students will not be successful unless we start on the level on which the students find themselves and address ourselves to their concerns and predicaments. That Jewish students are accessible to such influence is shown by the impact of intelligently planned and pro- grammed summer camps and similar projects of intense Jewish living and experience. It is shown in the products of day-schools. It is shown in the influence a gifted and skillful teacher can have on the lives of young people, the questions they begin to ask, the decisions they make. It is shown, in our case, for instance, in the increasing number of young people who have been motivated to enter the rabbinate and other fields of Jewish communal service as a direct result of their exposure to the Hillel program. Rosenthal himself shows that Jewish education in the third generation has some effect. It cuts the intermarriage rate in this generation into half. If this is done by the often inadequate and flimsy Jewish education to which our youngsters are generally exposed, better education will achieve more. However, in order to achieve more we may THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 97

well have to rethink and retool our educational methods and objectives in several ways.

(1) First, Jewish education must seek to narrow or close the gap between the level of religious belief and sophistication on which a student finds himself when he enters college, and the intellectual level on which he is expected to pursue his general studies at the university. Positively speaking, his Jewish education should enable him to understand and affirm the values and commitments of his tradition with the same maturity and intellectual integrity which char- acterize his other activities in the academic community.

(2) A second observation. Many Christian and some Jewish educators today advocate the introduction of more religious courses and perspectives into university teaching. I understand their concern. Yet, unlike these men, I feel what is needed most today is not that we put more religion into higher education but that we put more higher education into religion. In our educational philosophy, we must learn to look for truth more than for the comforts of security. We must overcome the fear that inquiry will destroy faith, welcome critical questions, and not fall back upon cliches, indulge in dogmatic statements, or justify religious faith because it was a factor that safeguarded Jewish survival in the past. We should insist on mature intellectual standards in dealing with the religious and cultural aspects of our tradition. In the pursuit of this objective, we may actually have to muster the courage to rethink the content of our various denominational theologies. There is evidence that the conflict with scientific — that is the academic — points of view is greater for some theologies than for others, depending on the degree to which they do or do not clash head-on with science. We may have to face the fact that we may never be able to respond effectively to the intellectual challenge of our environment unless we rethink or perhaps even relinquish some of the tenets which are no longer meaningful to the university-trained person today, and 98 INTER MARRIAGE construct a viable philosophy of Judaism that is equal to the challenges of our time.

(3i) We must also find some way of making Jewish life relevant to the personal and social issues of our world. Jewish education in the United States still is largely concerned with group survival as a sort of therapy. We want to make Jewishness pleasant for our children so that they will remember that it is pleasant to be Jews, avoid intermarriage, and thus enable the Jewish group to survive. But, as Maurice Pekarsky once asked: "Survive for what?" Jewish education must of course concern itself with the problems and predicaments of Jews as Jews, with the particular social dislocations and psychological difficulties arising from minority status. But this is not enough. Granted that Jewish education must be so designed as to assure Jewish survival. But what about human survival? "Jews are human beings too. They suffer not only as Jews. They fall in love not only as Jews. They die not only as Jews. In this world there are not only Jewish problems. There are human problems. There are those predicaments of life and death which are common to all men." A human-being-born-Jew needs more than pleasant associations with his group. He must also be able to face intelligently and courageously the perennial questions which have disturbed the minds and hearts of all men: the questions about life and death and suffering and evil and right and wrong and love and sex, and all the other problems that human beings must face. What does Judaism have to say to these questions that is meaningful? To what degree is it prepared to answer the questions of man as man? These are the issues to which Jewish education must address itself and to which it must find an answer if Jewish distinctiveness is to be meaningful.

(4) We shall not only have to rethink and retool our educational goals and methods; we shall also have to intensify and multiply our educational efforts on the college campus. The college campus today presents the most THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 99

grossly neglected segment in the entire field of Jewish education. A recent study of the World Jewish Congress estimated that approximately sixty million dollars are spent on the elementary and secondary Jewish education of about 600,000 Jewish children in the U. S. every year, that is, about $100 for each child per year. The amount provided at present by the American Jewish community for Jewish work among college students is slightly more than $8.00 per student per year. The astonishing thing is how much has been and is being achieved with so little. If the Jewish community is serious in its concern for the Jewish welfare of the Jewish college student, a radical realign- ment of its allocation priorities will be required.

(5) Lastly, we must realize that even the best Jewish education — and we are far from having or getting it — will not automatically prevent intermarriage, though a poor brand of education undoubtedly contributes to its rise. Some intermarriage is inevitable in an open society. For some people it is a means of escape. For others it is the culmination and fulfillment of deep and lasting attachments formed by young people in love, almost against their will and often against the pressure of their world. Richard Rubenstein rightly pointed out that intermarriage is here to stay and that our problem is not merely to prevent it but to learn how to cope with it. And Jack Cohen places the whole problem in proper perspective when he says that "the price of freedom is the tension caused by our desire to survive in the face of inevitable competition." Jewish survival hinges on numerous factors, many beyond the control of the organized Jewish community. There is only one area in which the outcome can be significantly affected: the cultivation of the will to survive as a Jew. In the final analysis, then, "the answer to intermarriage is the quality of Jewish life, for the enhancement of which Jewish education is the main instrument." 100 INTER MARRIAGE

DISCUSSANT—DR. MORTON TEICHER

I'd like to preface my comments by a word of self- defense. I am an anthropologist as well as a social worker, and as an anthropologist I have done field work up in the Arctic among the Eskimos, so I am really an expert on God's frozen people, rather than God's chosen people.

It's almost redundant to serve as a discussant after the kind of presentation that we have just had. I am sure, Dr. Jospe, that I speak not only for myself, but for everbody in this room when I say that you have given us a rare treat. You have presented us with a solid, comprehensive and thoroughgoing analysis of a knotty problem, and we are all in your debt. Dr. Jospe's masterful critique of the article by Erich Rosenthal illuminates some of the questions which have been raised about this paper that has given rise to so much discussion. And one might add, simply, the reminder which was echoed here this morning. The largest center of Jewish population is still New York and while we need to be concerned about the Jews of Iowa and Washington, we don't have to start saying Kaddish for the Jewish community of America because of the statistics from Iowa and Washington, D. C.

Nevertheless, as Dr. Jospe quite properly points out, there is cause for concern. There is little doubt that the rate of intermarriage is increasing; there is little doubt that this is the inevitable risk of an open society. Nor can there be very much doubt about the conclusion reported by Rabbi Gordon in his book to which reference has already been made, to the effect that intermarriage will continue to take place in America, and we may expect that intermarriages will continue to increase in our society.

Our concern with this problem, and when I say "our" I am talking as a social worker, our concern with this problem is not the dispassionate concern of the social scientist. We, and again I am talking as a social worker, THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 101 are committed to Jewish continuity. We have a value orientation with respect to this phenomenon. Intermarriage coupled with our failure to reproduce ourselves, is a threat to Jewish continuity. Our concern as social workers, more- over, arises from the striking evidence that the failure and the divorce rate is greater among intermarriage couples than in marriages among two people of the same faith. Here, too, we have a value orientation. We believe in the preservation of the family and in the primacy of the family as the unit of society. Divorce and separation and family breakup is undesirable. The heightened likelihood of family breakup in intermarriage is then a second vital base for our concern about intermarriage. Our commitment to Jewish continuity, and our desire to reduce warping of family stability, provide the twin planks in the platform from which we must move as we develop plans, policies, procedures and programs for coping with the problem of intermarriage.

Out of the wealth of his knowledge about Jewish college students, Dr. Jospe has posed for us a variety of issues to which we must address ourselves. This pre-supposes that the target of our efforts is the college student. I am sure that Dr. Jospe will agree that the college student is but one target. Indeed, he concludes with the trenchant observation that the "total quality of Jewish life must be examined if we are to be effective in reducing the risk of intermarriage." And within this totality Dr. Jospe singles out Jewish education as a particular focus of our efforts. It is interesting to note that after a recent review of the manpower situation in Jewish communal service, I came to a similar conclusion: Jewish education must be tackled vigorously and improved considerably if we are to solve the problem of personnel shortages in Jewish communal service. And I suspect that one might address oneself to almost any problem in the contemporary Jewish world; apathy, leadership development, relationship to Israel, etc., etc., and come to the same conclusion—that we have to concentrate on Jewish education. 102 INTER MARRIAGE

The danger is that Jewish education may become the whipping boy, our modern scapegoat. If, however, we address ourselves to the quality of Jewish education, then perhaps we can achieve the objectives set forth by Dr. Jospe, of having the kind of Jewish education which will be relevant to our college students and indeed to us as well. Dr. Jospe warns us, quite appropriately, that even the best Jewish education will not prevent intermarriage. At best, it may reduce the risk of intermarriage, and we need to take a variety of steps in our efforts to reduce the risk of intermarriage. Let me give you one simple illustration of the kind of programmatic step which seems to me to be worth emulat- ing. Dr. Golovensky, the rabbi of my congregation in New Rochelle, meets regularly with the parents of high-school seniors who are concerned about the problem of college choice. He provides an opportunity for them to consider together the risks of having their sons and daughters attend colleges where there are small numbers of Jewish students. I think that opening up this kind of consideration is a contribution, hopefully, towards reducing the risk of intermarriage. Basically, however, I would underscore Dr. Jospe's con- tention that the total quality of Jewish life must be reviewed if we are to stem the tide of intermarriage. The secular- izing of our society and the non-sectarianizing of our Jewish communal organizations, require urgent consideration. I referred earlier to my background in anthropology. Let me assure you, out of that background, that marriage in all human society is a sacred transaction. It establishes a relationship of the highest value. Marriage is every- where regarded as a sacrament in the non-literate world. It has to be solemnized at sacred occasions. It is usually contracted at hallowed places. The bride and groom have to purify themselves spiritually and bodily. They have to dress in clothes with a magical or religious significance. THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 103

The wedding ritual invariably has a magical or religious character. The symbolism of the ceremony expresses a traditional view that in marriage the bride and groom are firmly united by a sacred bond—the joining of hands of fingers, the tying of garments, the exchange of rings—are practiced throughout the world. Not only the two consorts, not only their families, but the whole community is drawn together in this religious occasion. And these things are true for the bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, they are true for the aborigines ... of Australia, the Indians of America, the South Sea Islanders, the natives of Africa and Asia. All over, throughout the world, humans are moved deeply by marriage and feel that they have to rely on supernatural assistance. We fly in the face of human experience as we secularize marriage along with the secularization of our other social institutions. To combat this trend we need to reinvigorate our Jewish community. Our tradition and our culture must give substance and meaning to our daily lives. If we secularize and universal- ize, we lose our spiritual roots. We menace our willpower and our faith. The secularists and the non-sectarianizers are not the sole patrons of truth. Indeed, they undermine our spirit and threaten the preservation of our values. The eradication of boundaries and differences reflects a kind of spinelessness which would prostrate us before the false gods of Uniformity and Conformity. We want an America which will be safe for Diversity, and intermarriage and those who feel there is nothing wrong with intermarriage, do so because they feel it tends to level out differences. This is a part of a large movement towards a monolithic society which is boring in its sameness and implacably hostile to variety.

Respect for difference, preservation of difference, strengthening of difference—these are the prerequisites in America for a bold intensification of the Jewish community. It is in this kind of intensification that we will find the answer to the problem of intermarriage. Thank you. 104 INTER MARRIAGE

SUMMARY DISCUSSION

RABBI MORRIS KERTZER—I speak not only as a Rabbi but as a parent. I want to ask about the defects our college students find in the synagogue that repel them. I can't understand a young person of 24 who says to me, "Your generation ruined the world. You produced Hitler and so on." I challenge them by asking them what they would have done differently. They don't have a ready answer. Young persons aged 19 say, "The congregations are too com- mercial. They are too vulgar, too irrelevant." Yet we have adult education programs to which we beg them to come. We have services—and the service itself is an educational process. If they attended and they listened to the sermons and lectures on Judaism—and any Rabbi worth his salt gives 20 to 30 such sermons a year—they would receive some idea of Judaism and would not be illiterate. There is no commercialism in our schools. There is nothing cheap or irrelevant about what they hear in the spoken words of the service. They may not like the service and so on. But it seems to me to be a rationalization. Their parents rationalize not coming and here we give them an opportunity to refine some of their rationalization.

DR. JOSPE—You are absolutely right. In many cases, it is the rationalization. At that age it is natural to make this rationalization. We must, however, withdraw from our personal feelings about that matter—you as a Rabbi or I as a father of the child who is going through the problem. As you know, the worst people for Hillel Foundations on the college campus to get hold of are the children of rabbis. It is symptomatic, or something. To give a tiny example of the answer as far as I can touch it at this moment. We helped to program an institute for college preparation for the Essex County Ministerial and Rabbinical Associa- tion. The question which came to all of us most frequently, no matter what we talked about, from the 100 to 120 kids who came to six sessions, was: "Don't talk to us about these things, but tell me, Rabbi, why I should be Jewish?" "As long as we are at home and the Rabbi is interested in us" (and these are graduates of high school departments of the really outstanding conservative, liberal and traditional congregations in Essex County) "we will not do anything to THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 105

hurt him. But, tell me, isn't college life the opportunity finally for me to look at things myself and not through somebody else's eyes". This is the normal human development. Our hope is to provide the experience of a worthwhile possibility of Jewish identification any way we can. It's the only way I see it. We will never reach those who don't care. About leadership, that was true in the past. It reminds me of the girl applying for admittance to Smith. The question on the application form asks, "Do you consider yourself a leader?" One sweet, Jewish girl wrote "No", and tremblingly sent her application. By return mail came her acceptance with a personal note, "You have been accepted so that we will have at least one follower among 249 leaders." Now, however, with 80% of the total Jewish young population in college, we are not speaking just of the leadership of tomorrow, we are talking of the membership of the Jewish community tomorrow and in ten or twenty years.

RABBI KLIGFELD—The challenge of college, it seems to me, sometimes opens interesting questions. Sometimes people come home from college and tell me, "Rabbi, I wish I had worked harder. I wish I had learned more". They are challenged and their interest aroused by meeting non-Jewish students and professors. For example, one young man who fought me all along the way has become deeply interested in religious questions and is on the way to becoming a Professor of Theology. I agree that the emphasis on the pre-bar mitzvah years is un- fortunate. We might be a little more helpful if we could emphasize more the post-bar mitzvah years. Studies of the value systems of college students and professors show—unfortunately, from my point of view—that Catholic students maintain their religious identification to the greatest extent, Protes- tants less and Jews least of all. The studies indicate that Jews have a materialistic and self-centered set of values, not the kind of values we would hope would come from contact with the prophetic Jewish tradition.

I would like to note, also, that when college people marry and have children, they can come back very strong. They become caught up in the adult education program. No longer satisfied by their college courses in Philosophy, they want to know what Judaism says. 106 INTER MARRIAGE

I would like to ask Dr. Jospe to comment on the Jewish orthodox scientists.

DR. JOSPE—Two very brief comments. It is absolutely true that the religious retention rate of the Catholics is strongest, that among Jews it is lowest and midway among Protestants. The point, however, is twofold. First, the Catholics say, with great chagrin and much envy, we don't have any intellectuality in the Catholic community. Listen to the President of Notre Dame. The background makes the difference. Jewish survival loyalty is family- centered, not synagogue or church-centered as the Catholic's is. That is the essential point. Solomon Schecter once said that in his time the Jews worshiped God with the hearts of their parents. In our time, parents worship God with the hearts of their children. It is Judaism for their children, it is something which they themselves do not accept, it is outmoded, irrelevant for their own lives. They don't communicate. The result is that the religious retention is not as strong among Jews as in the Catholic church.

I hope my orthodox colleagues will forgive me for speaking frankly about the orthodox scientists. There is such a group and Rabbi Schacter cited them. But, without meaning to, Rabbi Schacter left a wrong impression. What he did not say is that orthodox scientists are scientists in the specific, narrow technical sense. They are chemists, physicists, mathematicians. There is not a single humanities degree among them. And that means something. It means, clearly, that this is the only way in which an orthodox man can be a scientist without a Ph.D., and still maintain his orthodoxy. The counterpart of this is a letter published in the Bulletin of the Yavner group at Brooklyn College. Incidentally, Rabbi Solo- veitchik took the writer to task. She wrote: "Do not take this course in philosophy—(it didn't say biology or chemistry or mathe- matics)—because this teacher is liable to undermine your tradition and your faith."

GRAENUM BERGER—Dr. Jospe seems to imply, despite the fact that he believes that part of the solution of intermarriage can be achieved through Jewish education, that we must also address ourselves to the relevancy with which Judaism deals with issues that are large and world shaking, such as the Civil Rights movement which, apparently, has attracted so many of our young people in recent years. But they too constitute only a fraction because rela- tively few students are interested in the Civil Rights movement. THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 107

However, Dr. Jospe says nothing throughout his whole paper about Jewish relevancy with respect to fundamental behavior, about which there may be a Jewish point of view and a Jewish position. Several years ago David Boroff pointed out in an article in "The Annals" on Jewish teenagers that as our daughters go to Smith, Rad- cliffe and Wellesley they take on all of the sexual patterns of the Christian girls, a free and permissive way of living quite contrary, obviously, to that which the family had expected. Nobody addresses themselves, apparently, to this problem. Recently, the sale of drugs and narcotics addiction appeared on several campuses, including that great expression of the Jewish community of America, Brandeis. Some of the members of the Board of Brandeis were outraged that this could happen in a school under Jewish auspices, where 85% of the student population is Jewish. I read a confidential memorandum written to the Board members, saying almost facetiously, "Now we are in the Ivy League class." Now this is a commentary, it seems to me, on our whole stance with respect to the relevancy of Jewish issues. I don't know whether if we made a study today of alcoholism on the campus, whether Dr. Snyder would come up with the same report that he discovered back in 1948 or 1949 or 1950, when he found that at Yale there were practically no alcoholics among the Jews. But again, as we become more and more acculturated, as we drive toward this pattern of behaving like the non-Jew, apparently this is likely to be one of the consequences. I have just read Rosemary Parks' report on Barnard for the last year. You all ought to get a copy of it because it is a very interesting document about life at Barnard, and she is talking here about the new housekeeping plans that have been developed for their students. "College students wish to go to the trouble of preparing their own meals and managing their own apartments as part of the student's need to be separate from the establishment in some overt fashion. This desire to disassociate is very strong and sometimes so strong that the words of another generation are simply not heard, let alone heeded. Interestingly enough, obliviousness rather than revolt seems to me to be the characteristic mask. It follows that the college from the student's point of view should exercise only the most limited jurisdiction over its dormitory property, and student behavior, except in the classroom, is beyond the scope of institutional responsibility or concern. To such students college is a place where students exercise their almost unlimited rights, faculty their rights, and perhaps a community, a society, emerges." 108 INTER MARRIAGE

Then she goes on to say, about the qualifications of the faculty, "If there is a difference between a calling and a profession, then college teaching has ceased to be a calling, and is becoming a profession which has stated office hours and carefully defined pro- fessional responsibilities. Teaching is now a field of experts, rather than of artists. Be that as it may, both students and faculty require that we take a new look at this idea of an academic community or society which moved, in the old days, to form character by its standards of fair play, decency and respectful attention to the higher things." I only cite this because this is a problem which not only operates in the Jewish community in terms of intermarriage and its consequences, but is a problem which is widespread, and I was wondering whether Dr. Jospe might give some indication of what Jewish faculty members 011 campuses or Hillel itself is doing to give a Jewish approach to some of these vexing pathological problems which face our Jewish youth.

DR. JOSPE—I appreciate this very thoughtful and very penetrating comment. I agree with much. I disagree with one thing, namely, the implication of the facts. Our discussion here today obviously was not a discussion of the nature of the American university in pre-land grant college life, in Flaxner's image or in any other image, but rather the role of Jewish education in the university community. If it were my task, or it had been my task to discuss this, Mr. Berger, my own thinking about the American university, I would have given you an entirely different speech. Different in many ways.

I think, for instance, and this is a partial, a substantive answer, to what you were asking, that at least the first two or three years of college in this country, are nothing but an artificial prolongation forced upon the youngsters, and prolonging their adolescence. It doesn't challenge, it doesn't give them the freedom they need. It surely does not create the conditions under which they can mature to freedom. I don't say that universally, because obviously we have such vast differences—sociological and cultural and ideological—that I do not want to make an overall statement of this kind, but if we could start from scratch in this country in terms of education, one would have to start re-thinking the kind of education we have been developing in this country. University here is quite different in terms of what it asks the student to do, and expects the student to THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 109 do, and demands of him, than what, in my judgment, a mature institution of higher education should be doing in many cases. Two, the question which you then raise is the following: Is Judaism applicable only to the things I happened to mention, such as Civil Rights? Are there not other vitally important areas in which Jewish convictions should be embodied? Certainly, I agree, except for one basic supposition, that what I was speaking of was not necessarily behavior contents, but conviction underlying behavior contents and penetrating them.

I think the sex morality of an individual, or his attitude towards drinking, or narcotics, not the act itself depends very largely ... on an attitude towards life. What I am concerned with in Jewish education at this moment is the level of creating an attitude towards life, out of which actions will flow. Therefore I didn't talk about these matters.

But you asked me a good question. What about it ? You know, I have an impression—it's contrary to what was said, and the impression is very simply this: that students really do not do it so much radically more, or more intensively today than they did 20 years ago, or 25 years ago. The situation is simple. They did it just as much as that time, except it was with more verstupt. They do it now more openly. The change is not in the increase, in my judgment, in our experience, but in the openness in which pornography is being distributed in general on the newsstands. Different patterns of society in which the things which were done on a more hidden basis, and more hushed up, but the pregnancies in numbers among college students, to my knowledge, have not increased. If that be a symptom, it means a symptom. And we had narcotic problems already at Indiana and Illinois in my time. That they are not new to the Ivy League or a Brandeis University, and I say to you in all honesty, even if you have a curfew at 10 o'clock, and that was my argument with the Dean of Women constantly, I know that the students can do before 10 o'clock just as much as after 10 o'clock.

What I am saying to you is something very simple. I am saying to you that we have no visual evidence that there is a radical change in behavior patterns, of frequency of behavior patterns. I think the change which we really face is that we have a different concern, and a different visibility of these behavior patterns today. 110 INTER MARRIAGE

RABBI DAVID GOLOVENSKY—I want to join with the others, Dr. Jospe, in commenting on the wonderful paper that you delivered here which impressed and illuminated us all. As an aside, I want to say, and this certainly does not reflect upon anything you said, other than to say that yours was an incomplete statement. Although the humanities are not represented in the organization of orthodox scientists, there are, however, and I am sure you are aware of them, many such as the youngest professor at Harvard Law School, a very wonderful 26-year old orthodox young man. There is also an esteemed law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and I can give you names of those who teacli literature and anthropology and sociology. They are not organized as the orthodox scientists are, but there are many.

That doesn't mean that the picture is substantially altered or changed. I just would like to make this comment in the interest of fact. I am a little concerned about stereotyping the college student almost as a thinking machine. I don't think he was, or he is. I think we stereotype him unjustly, also, when we speak of him as a "rebel." I remember when I was at college—incidentally, most of us went to college, and we married Jewish women, and I don't think most of us had a much sounder Jewish education, nor was the collegiate community less sophisticated academically than it is today— 20 or 30 years ago, when I was at college, the students were conformists—in their rebellion. Students today are also conformists in rebellion. On a college campus today, they dress alike. If they dress sloppily, they all dress sloppily—a certain type of sloppiness. In some of the Ivy League colleges they dress, of course, in Brooks Brothers clothes, and so on. In some ways they are the most conforming of people, not rebels.

Now, they are "rebels" also in certain other respects. They are today, they were then. When I was at college, many of us were parlor pinks. That was the day of Alger Hiss. Alger Hiss unfortunately made the mistake of, apparently, continuing on in a serious way after he got out college. When we were at college it was peace parades, we were all for the great new society that was in the making, and I remember one student in our class, a very brilliant student who later studied at the London School of Economics. Incidentally he is one of the leading Orthodox Jews of America. At the time he was alleged to have picketed his father's factory for the right for the THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 111 employees to organize. Today, incidentally, he is president of that firm. Now, I have visited a number of colleges. You speak about their interest in the Negro rights movement. I don't think it's an intellectual interest. You are intellectualizing this college student. I think it's deeply emotional. What happened on the California campus was not all intellectual. They are not, the 24,000, all intellectuals. They are emotionally aroused and involved. Now, I recall when we were all excited about other problems, but we were all rebels in our day. I visited, for instance, a very fine university campus a few weeks ago, and they also spoke about their great commitment to Negro equality. So I said to this young lady, "If you are really deeply committed, firstly, why don't you go to Harlem, which is right around from your corner, why do you go to Mississippi for three weeks? Secondly, what happened to those who were deeply committed four years ago ? They are members now in congregations in suburbia. They like to go to Mississippi for three weeks, and then come back to a luxurious home. They don't live in Mississippi and they don't go to Spellman College to uplift the Negro. They sign checks the way we libertarians sing checks—with money? They don't have money. They sign it with three weeks."

The point I am making is not to minimize the problem, but I wonder whether we are not looking at it in an obscured way. I say that Jewish education should be uplifted, there is no question about it. How will we ever get Jewish education beyond the age of 13 or 14? How long can we keep them, to be on the par of a college senior in philosophy? I don't think we can ever get them. I think if we appeal to them on an intellectual basis, we are lost before we begin. Not that we should not improve the education, not that we should not advance the education, but I say, we, too, went to college 20 and 30 years ago, where we were minorities, and we didn't marry outside the faith. There are two reasons for it. First, at that time a young man in college didn't think of getting married. At that time he had to earn a living before he proposed to a young lady. This is a whole new conformity on the campus today. It started with the War. At the time of the War, marriage was a salvation from joining the Army, and perhaps getting killed. Today, some of it is to escape the draft. If you're under 26 and you're married, you don't go into service. These are partial reasons. The point is that just as 25 years ago the conformity of rebellion was for peace and for Marxism, today there is a conformity of getting married. Now, when you have the 112 INTER MARRIAGE age of rebellion and the age of marriage coming together, that pro- duces intermarriage on a large scale. Ten years ago the age of rebellion was separated from the age of marriage. In those years, they would come back home after they graduated, back into their community, they would take a girl whom they should have picked in the first place and get married and live happily ever after. But today they are picking a mate at a time when they are going through the eye of a storm, and that's what is causing it. What's the answer? Education would be an answer if it were possible, but at the age of 14 or 15 you can't make a Jewish philosopher or theologian out of these kids, these young people.

I think the answer is that we have taken the emotionality out of religion, we have not provided the young people until the age of 18 with a home that counts, with a family together that provides memories and sentiments and attachments and love. It is because the home is not what it was. I think the answer is if we make the Jewish home meaningful, and I am not talking about orthodoxy at the moment—whatever my particular philosophy is, it is mine—but if you make the home satisfying, emotionally happy and contented, where the child leaves for college with happy memories, and wants to come back to the home, to the family, to the sister and brother, I think we can stem the tide that rises over into intermarriage. But all this stereotyping of the college young people as being intellectual machines is wrong. They are no more intellectual today than they were 20 years ago. Yes, they spout philosophy, and they spout science, but down deep, when it comes to emotions, they love women and they indulge in sex not because of any intellectual commitment, they drink alcohol not because of intellectualism, and they take drugs not because of intellectualism. That's part of conformity of rebellion against society during a critical period of life, during which they should not choose their life mate.

RABBI ISAAC TRAININ—We have in this room part of our young leadership of our Commission, and the following young, American- born, college-trained, I would say, intellectuals, Sim Gluckson, Win Robins, Ed Abramson Fred Kaufman, and Norman Ryp. They are Conservative, Orthodox, Reform of various degrees, but what I would like one of them to answer for me is "How is it that this group was able to go through the crucial years of college and to remain Jewish and faithful, and with a strong commitment to Jewish tradition and the Jewish way of life"? How about it fellows, which one of you will answer that one? THE CRUCIAL, COLLEGE YEARS 113

WIN ROBINS—The one point, Rabbi Golovensky, that I think you omitted to mention was, or perhaps to consider, is that college today is different from what it was 30 years ago. Whereas it was possible for a young Jewish boy or girl to go to college 20 or 30 years ago, and be an intellectual rebel, the one thing that was not largely open to him, at least according to my understanding of the situation, was the opportunity at the same time to become indistin- guishable from his Gentile fellow students. It is now possible today to couple the rejection intellectually of the Jewish tradition with the ability to embrace, if you will, the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant ethic that is so prevalent in the large majority of colleges and universities of the United States. This being the case, a Jewish boy or girl who finds no particular intellectual attraction to Judaism and Jewish life is able to become not a Protestant, but to become indis- tinguishable from Protestants and Catholics, and at the same time, to reject all that is Jewish, not just intellectually, but socially as well. So that instead of coming back home, as you put it, to Jewish life, he loses all contact with Jewish life and ends up being, if you will, not only a non-Jew, but to all intents and purposes, indistin- guishable from non-Jews.

Now, several of us have devoted a great deal of thought to this particular problem, and are hoping that we shall be able to attack one aspect of it. I agree completely with Dr. Jospe that increased Jewish education is of vital importance, but I would like to ask Dr. Jospe if he would comment for a moment on the problems that confront Jewish boys and girls who go off to college who do not have that education. The program that you have described, Dr. Jospe, is one that will be many years in the making because it involves a complete revitalization of Jewish education.

What can be done, now, for boys and girls who have not had the benefit of that education? I know that you know my own view on the subject, but I would welcome your commenting publicly on it, and I see that I have not really answered Rabbi Trainin at all. I haven't started. I should explain that the reason I find it difficult to do so is because whatever it is that has brought me here today, it is something that occurred to me after I got out of college, and I went through the experiences that have been described, the rebellion and everything else of the sort, and that I am here is an accident, but it does not minimize my commitment. Indeed, I'd like to think that it's very strong, but statistically I am an accident. 114 INTER MARRIAGE

I feel that the one thing that is lacking today in Jewish education, and about which something can be done today, is adequate social preparation for college, because most of us here who come from New York have never been in an environment that is a non-Jewish environment, and this is true of the boys and girls who are going off to college. They don't know what life is like in a Gentile society. As a result, they don't know what to expect, and they embrace the wrong things, and start out on the wrong foot, and they think it is the wise, the smart, the glamorous thing to do.

I think that with some sort of program of social education for them, telling them what college is going to be like, and how college differs from the society in which they have lived, there is some hope that they will start out as Jews and remain as Jews. They will be subject to intellectual battles that may shake their faith to the core, but it will not necessarily shake them as Jews, and I would hope they would be able to survive and return intellectually to Judaism as well as socially. But I am desperately afraid they will leave their Jewish- ness in college, not only intellectually, but once and for all socially, and that they will be completely and irrevocably lost to the Jewish community.

RABBI JOEL ZION—The soul of American Jewish leadership is being fought for on the university campus. The Hillel Foundation has failed abysmally in this struggle for the soul of our youth and I hope that this conference will examine the Hillel Foundation. I should like to see our individual religious groups enter the campus full force to work with students from the respective Reform, Conservative and Orthodox congregations. I visit dozens and dozens of universities. Wherever I go I see offices of all Christian groups. I walk into the one Jewish office, the Hillel office. It is empty and bereft. I think it is time we correct the historical error of turning the soul of American youth over to one major national Jewish agency, which happens to be a secular one.